'I've never seen a color that was wrong': enrico marone cinzano exhibits at friedman benda

enrico marone cinzano: obsessed by nature

Italian artist Enrico Marone Cinzano opens at Friedman Benda in New York with his solo show Obsessed By Nature. As the title suggests, the diverse works on view are informed by the artist’s obsession with the beauty and logic of the natural world. Marone Cinzano describes his practice as an exploration of contrasts, where discarded materials and industrial remnants are transformed into sculptural objects that evoke both organic fluidity and structural precision. ‘What was becomes something else,’ he tells designboom in an interview ahead of the show’s opening, describing his process of reimagining overlooked materials into timeless functional objects. Obsessed By Nature will be on view at Friedman Benda from November 14th — December 14th, 2024.

Enrico Marone Cinzano, portrait | all images courtesy Friedman Benda

discarded materials become functional art

Enrico Marone Cinzano’s works on view at Friedman Benda’s New York gallery are informed by his fascination with contrast. In the exhibition, materials such as African ebony, shark skin from the food industry, and World War II tank prisms find new life in unexpected forms. ‘I love contrast,’ he says. ‘Using a super rough, natural surface and then contrasting it with shiny or matte materials has always fascinated me.’ This ethos extends to the collection’s diverse origins, from Indian junkyards to military discharges in Italy, where he uncovers forgotten elements to be repurposed. For the artist, this process is not about sustainability as a trend but about respecting the inherent circularity of nature. ‘Nature has all the answers,’ he asserts, underscoring the foundation of his practice.

While he was never formally trained, he credits his Italian heritage and time spent in Tuscany for his sensitivity to aesthetics. ‘There’s a reason the Renaissance happened there,’ he reflects, noting the region’s unmatched light and colors. His work embraces nature’s imperfections, blending them with human craftsmanship to create objects that challenge traditional design boundaries. Despite his hard-edged creations, the designer hints at a softer direction for the future. ‘Seeing my work together, I realize it’s quite hard. I think it’s time to go fluffy,’ he muses, imagining the next evolution of his artistic narrative. Read the full interview with Enrico Marone Cinzano below!

Enrico Marone Cinzano, Rosa, 2021

a dialogue with Enrico Marone Cinzano

designboom (DB): This is your first solo show with Friedman Benda. Might you give us a bit of context about your background and your work?

Enrico Marone Cinzano (EMC): I’m from Italy, although I left when I was very young. Specifically, I spent a lot of time in Tuscany. There’s an innate sense of aesthetics there, especially with light and colors, because we have amazing colors. There’s a good reason why the Renaissance was there, not somewhere else. I’m born in Torino, which is a Baroque city, and extremely driven by the court, because the king was living there. So the whole city is very designed. I always liked aesthetics. I’m untrained, unschooled, and unknown. This gives me an advantage of some sort, because there’s no provenance to what I do.

Enrico Marone Cinzano, Marmo, 2023

EMC continued: I’m obsessed by nature and materials. In the case of these two lamps, it was the original stones, which were discarded stones, that really fascinated me. In case of the green ‘Verde’ lamp, it was this log that I found in India that had an incredible patina. In the case of the four ‘Piego’ chairs, it was finding these huge blocks of materials that have been left over from previous productions. I also studied the properties of the stones. Some stones are cooling, some are soothing, some are grounding. In the case of the two ‘Marmo’ night tables, they are made with shark skin left over from the food industry. The ebony is African ebony that was left over from a production at a previous job.

Enrico Marone Cinzano, Basculante, 2024

DB: You’ve also integrated headlamps into some of these works?

EMC: The head lamps come from a junkyard in India. The caps for the lights on the ‘Bianca’ lamp are actually resistors for high tension wiring. For the ‘Rosa Tank Lamp,’ I used prisms from World War Two tanks, which were used to see the enemy from inside the tank. I think that there’s so much talk about war right now, so I decided, ‘screw it, let’s do it pink.’ I love contrast. Contrast has always been something that I was fascinated by. I love the idea of using a super rough, natural surface and then contrasting it with shiny or matte materials.

The design process is actually quite easy for me. I don’t design, I find something and I build on it. I find something that I like, and then I generally purchase it and put it away. Then maybe six months or a year later, I revisit it and realize what I want to build with it.

Enrico Marone Cinzano, Verde, 2024

DB: You must have a lot of objects and materials stored!

EMC: I have a crazy storage room, with crazy materials — things that people just leave in a junkyard. Some elements come from Italy in a junkyard near Cecina, I found some from a military discharge in Torino. Some are from India. I am also working on a piece that’s made of military radios which I got on eBay. There are many things that are just discarded which are super cool. 

Maybe most of my work is not very feminine, but this piece, ‘Basculante,’ is a mechanism for a nursing chair made with ball bearings from trucks contrasted with glass. This was a nightmare to engineer. Like I said, I’m not schooled and I’m not trained. Unlike other people, I don’t think what can be done. I imagine what I want to see, and that becomes a nightmare for the people that work for me. I told them I want the base to be completely glass. I want to see the mechanism, the transparency. On top is a Ferrari chair I found in a junkyard contrasting with fossilized wood.

DB: We’re seeing a lot of repurposed materials in this collection. Is this important to you from an environmental perspective, or is the minimal waste aspect a secondary result?

EMC: Years ago I realized that ‘sustainability’ was being monetized for business, and in some ways it wasn’t real. That turned me off from sustainability, but I still had that thought in the back of my head. In some ways it didn’t make sense, but overall it did. So I moved away from sustainability and into nature, and I saw that nature is circular. Now I just think that you can make some really cool stuff, and you can still be respectful.

One day I had to fly to London to give a talk, and an audience member confronted me for my carbon emissions. Another time, a woman confronted me for wearing an old fur jacket. I told her, ‘Let’s slash it. If you think that’s more constructive than me repurposing an old garment that is made of fur, go right ahead.’ But I don’t think that it’s a rational way of approaching it. You have to be reasonable. People get very caught up in being moralistic, and look where that got us.

Enrico Marone Cinzano, Sbieco, 2024

DB: Hopefully we’re going in the right direction.

EMC: The pendulum does swing. If we go too far on the wrong side, we will go back to the right side. Everything has an equal and opposite reaction. My obsession with nature is because I think that nature has all the answers. That’s the only message I like to give out. It’s not about recycling, repurposing, or sustainability. This is not for me. But the answers are definitely in nature.

DB: Do you spend a lot of time in nature, or is it something that you admire from afar?

EMC: I’m a very visual person. That’s why I’m an artist. I have never seen a color, a shape, a shade, or anything in nature that was wrong. Nature has incredible mathematics, physics, chemistry, ethics, philosophy. Whenever I go into nature, I see answers personally. It’s beautiful, it’s correct. There is intelligence in nature.

DB: Nature can often be quite destructive. Some regions have devastating storms, for instance.

EMC: Then we shouldn’t be living there! Nature has rhythms, and we want everything to be binary. But life is not binary, so this is our mistake. Secondly, that is nature reacting — from greenhouse gasses and so on. Who will win between nature and us? Always nature.

DB: Touching on a comment you made earlier, do you see your work as being generally more masculine?

EMC: Seeing it all together, I now realize that my work is quite hard. I would like to explore getting a little bit softer. I think it’s time to go fluffy. I’ve always had dogs, and I always had Rottweilers. Now I want to get a tiny, bitchy Pomeranian, and I want him to run the show (laughing). I also found chickens that have feathers that are like fur! They’re actually very fluffy and they’re soft. So I think I’m going to go soft now.

Enrico Marone Cinzano, Piego (Yellow), 2024

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Enrico Marone Cinzano, Rosa Tank Lamp, 2023

Enrico Marone Cinzano, Piego (Red), 2024

Enrico Marone Cinzano, Piego (White), 2024

Enrico Marone Cinzano, Piego (Brown), 2024

project info:

exhibition title: Enrico Marone Cinzano: Obsessed By Nature

artist: Enrico Marone Cinzano | @enricomaronecinzano

gallery: Friedman Benda | @friedman_benda

location: 515 W 26th St 1st Floor, New York, NY

on view: November 14th, 2024 — December 14th, 2024

photography: © Friedman Benda