Araldica by Federico Pepe

Araldica is juxtaposition incarnate. The warmth and chaos of vintage endpapers contrasted with the crispness of modern vetor graphics creates a range fundemantally warm and invigorating that remains fresh and now.

Aesthetically courageous, Araldica is the epitome of an avant-garde collection, part chaos and part aristocratic austerity.

The collection focuses on the interaction of crisp modern digital vectors with the chaotic, analogue mix of colours typical of marbled papers. The result is a kaleidoscope of marbled patterns intersected by stable geometry. This geometry allows Araldica to be equally at home in formal interiors or complement playful and vibrant applications where its chaotic alter ego shines. The vibrant colours pass each other in endless variety, a property of how marbling works: the immiscibility of hydrophobic versus aqueous inks.

The Araldica project’s very name evokes strength and nobility, and it is grounded in a past whose weight does not drag it backwards but rather catapults it forwards into the future. Here, Federico’s digital geometries become the most solid of materials, taking shape in a graphic object, condensing stories and images into three or two dimensions.

In Pepe’s and CEDIT’s space, Euclidean geometrical forms encounter the marble of Phidias, the intricate patterns of the floor of Milan Cathedral merge into the Baroque images of the marbles found in Roman art galleries, and private space opens out to the infinite space of a thousand possible universal histories.