On the occasion of Milan Design Week 2026, the exhibition (META)FISICA contextualises a landmark collection of cc-tapis rugs designed in collaboration with the historic Milanese design house Fornasetti. Reinterpreting a selection of archival motifs by the artists Piero Fornasetti (1913-1988) and his son Barnaba (1950- ), the series features surrealist and dreamlike imagery from the built and natural worlds, emboldened by the artisanal textures of cc-tapis workmanship from around the world. (META)FISICA takes its title from the 32-panel screen “La Stanza Metafisica” designed by Piero Fornasetti in 1958—a portable architecture that questions the 2nd and 3rd dimensions through trompe l’oeil artistic devices. Unfolding like a labyrinth through the gallery’s six rooms, the exhibition examines the role of rugs as artworks and architectures, revisiting Fornasetti’s opulent and eclectic universe as a series of flat planes and repetitive gestures in conversation with original source material from the artists’ own hands dating back to the 1950s. The Fornasetti archive fuels an ongoing process of creative evolution. Rooted in a lifelong practice of collecting, it encompasses furniture, objects, and over 10,000 hand-drawn motifs spanning nearly a century. These archival materials act as generative matrices, following a logic of repetition and transformation where historic images are refined and translated into the works on view. As Artistic Director and custodian of his father Piero’s legacy, Barnaba draws on this wealth of heritage not merely for re-editions, but as the foundation for new creations.

A multi-channel sound installation by the Catalan artist Carlos Casas is proposed as a metaphysical architecture structured through four states — each embodied as a climate, a season, and a mode of perception. Unique compositions unfold in each room of the exhibition, corresponding to motifs throughout the collection. Amplified by suspended custom speakers by Giorgio di Salvo, four animal presences — the cat, the snake, the fox and the crow — emerge as guides of consciousness, articulating a passage from prelinguistic perception to symbolic thought, from instinct to myth, from fragmentation to the construction of civilisation — as if moving through ruins while new structures begin to form. Ranging from 220-440Hz, a crescendo of sounds culminates in the Ruins basement room, where a 20-minute composition invites viewers to pause within the labyrinth, as the sounds spiral through shifting layers of awareness without a fixed center.

I. BEACH, THE CAT THE STATE OF PERCEPTION (LIMINAL AWARENESS)
II. FOREST, THE SNAKE THE STATE OF AWAKENING (TRANSFORMATION)
III. DESERT, THE FOX THE STATE OF DISORIENTATION (FRAGMENTATION)
IV. MOUNTAIN, THE CROW THE STATE OF TRANSCENDENCE (META-CONSCIOUSNESS)

The collection brings the imaginative and almost dreamlike universe of Fornasetti into the tactile, material world of cc-tapis, merging two emblematic forces of Italian design. The collection takes shape as a visual and conceptual dialogue between Fornasetti’s symbolic and timeless imagery — filled with illusion, irony, and storytelling — and the experimental vision of cc-tapis, which has long explored the rug as an expressive surface, a design space, and a collectible object. The result is a collection in which each rug becomes a stage, evoking a theatricality suspended between fiction and function. Trompe-l’oeil, fragmentations, rhythmic variations, and graphic details merge with refined textures, transforming each piece into a narrative “act” ready to inhabit a space with character and personality.

(META)FISICA - PRESSKIT, PDF

(META)FISICA - PRESSKIT, WORD