The lightness of intuitions was the title of the exhibition about Paolo Ulian, organized by Elisa Zannoni and the Cultural Association Imaginificat, sponsored by the Sanlorenzo shipyard
IF INDUSTRIAL DESIGN CAN BE CONSIDERED AN ETHICAL OCCUPATION, THEN PAOLO ULIAN IS ONE OF ITS MOST AGGRESSIVE ENTHUSIASTS. The entire career of the designer, born in Massa Carrara in 1961, is dedicated to creative subversion and aesthetics with repercussions on social well-being; an attitude which at first glance may not coincide with the needs of large-scale production and consumption, but which actually generates entertaining and ironic objects that often become compulsory items. Years ago, in an interview, Ulian declared: «When you have an intuition you believe in and where you can see a lateral or forward shift with respect to the reality, then you must always pursue it, without questioning too much whether the project is ‘design’ or if it is something different».
A thought perhaps more in tune with an artist rather than an industrial designer, but this explains the success of his creations. And it is just this intuition coming forth so spontaneously, but only from a mind nourished with abundant and continuous doses of knowledge, that has been the subject of a retrospective exhibition dedicated to the designer at the Medici Palace of Seravezza, a few kilometres from Pietrasanta, in the province Lucca.
(Paolo Ulian, the ethics of the design – Barchemagazine.com – July 2016)
