Irene Cattaneo (Photo by Ilaria Zago courtesy of Lo Studio - Nadja Romain)
Irene Cattaneo (1989) is a multihyphenate artist whose work encompasses wearable art, set design, installation, language art and, more recently, the broader formal landscape of sculptural design. After relocating to Venice to collaborate with local artisans in 2021, she developed the Clouds and Coulds series, the starting place for many of the motifs that have come to define her recent explorations in functional art. Cattaneo’s intensive focus on the phenomenology of artisanal glass production underpins a vocabulary of subtle and striking material effects. Literature, personal history, and pithy wordplay serve as the conceptual spine of her oeuvre. Formally, her designs are identifiable by their crisp silhouettes, graphic concision, and playful compression of iconic symbols into functional objects. The outputs of her practice have ranged widely in scale and medium–with a particular recent focus on glass. Since her solo debut, Yūgen, during Venice Glass Week, the artist has maintained a steady cadence of showings in Venice and internationally. This year she presented the in-situ installation Carpe(t) Diem at La Samartaine / LVMH in Paris, and Just my cup of tea(r)s at Homo Faber in Venice, where her solo show Meteomorphosis is currently on view at Lo Studio-Nadja Romain.
Irene Cattaneo (1989) is a multihyphenate artist whose work encompasses wearable art, set design, installation, language art and, more recently, the broader formal landscape of sculptural design. After relocating to Venice to collaborate with local artisans in 2021, she developed the Clouds and Coulds series, the starting place for many of the motifs that have come to define her recent explorations in functional art. Cattaneo’s intensive focus on the phenomenology of artisanal glass production underpins a vocabulary of subtle and striking material effects. Literature, personal history, and pithy wordplay serve as the conceptual spine of her oeuvre. Formally, her designs are identifiable by their crisp silhouettes, graphic concision, and playful compression of iconic symbols into functional objects. The outputs of her practice have ranged widely in scale and medium–with a particular recent focus on glass. Since her solo debut, Yūgen, during Venice Glass Week, the artist has maintained a steady cadence of showings in Venice and internationally. This year she presented the in-situ installation Carpe(t) Diem at La Samartaine / LVMH in Paris, and Just my cup of tea(r)s at Homo Faber in Venice, where her solo show Meteomorphosis is currently on view at Lo Studio-Nadja Romain.