'Jello' by Marco Campardo at Galerie kreo delves into the designer's hands-on making

"Thinking with one’s hands and making with one's head. Perhaps this is the best way to describe Marco Campardo's attitude to design," mentions Italian editor and curator Luca Lo Pinto in the press release for Jello, Galerie kreo’s upcoming exhibition in Paris, France. Set to take place from February 7 – April 5, 2025, the design exhibition delves into the London-based Italian designer’s practice, which challenges conventional production methods and is grounded in material exploration and hands-on making. By employing unorthodox tools and techniques, he crafts objects and product designs that are both conceptually and visually compelling.

For Jello, his first collaboration with Galerie kreo, the product designer brings his distinctive approach to the forefront, re-examining the relationship between mould and outcome, process and object. Whereas the conventional design method involves creating an ideal form to be reproduced precisely through a mould, Campardo's work challenges this by emphasising that forms arise not from drawing on paper but from a tactile, hands-on process.

Campardo rarely starts a design from scratch; instead, he's often drawn to a material or seeks intuitive solutions to the challenges and constraints specific to a project. His early years spent with his father in a woodworking shop profoundly shaped his approach, grounding it in a technical understanding of objects—their creation, function and use. The Jello collection on view, as much as his previous works such as Sugar Shapes, George and the Elle chair, exemplify this mindset, "where design is viewed as a speculative practice rooted in material experimentation and innovative production techniques", the press statement notes.

"When I first met Marco fifteen years ago, his relationship with the language of design was exquisitely two-dimensional, as he was a graphic designer. A graphic designer with a Helvetica attitude imbued with a Mediterranean spirit, so solid in his conviction about design, that I could hardly have imagined him outside of that frame," Pinto recounts. "And yet, when I invited him in 2019 to work on the visual identity of MACRO, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome that I directed, it was based on the knowledge that he could step outside of the two-dimensional frame, working with three-dimensional form and space, designing seating systems and exhibition displays. It was surprising to witness closely the transformation of Marco Campardo from a designer of signs to a designer of objects. During a workshop held at MACRO to produce stools – without a meaningful budget or professional tools – [he] devised a process that allowed him to create objects in a serial manner, but still unique, using a cardboard mould instead of silicone. This is the origin story of Jello shown today," he continues.

What began as a project to push beyond the limitations of time, space, materials and technology has paradoxically evolved into a sort of personal manifesto. The early use of cardboard—a humble material—in the series' first iterations was a deliberate statement against conventional design, embracing simplicity and imperfection. Starting with basic stools designed for MACRO, the project has grown over the years to encompass a diverse range of large-scale furniture design pieces, now showcased for the first time at Galerie kreo: a dining table, a square coffee table, a console, a bench and a mirror/ chair design.

While the techniques have become more refined and precise, they still carry the essence of that initial approach. This is reflected in the objects themselves, where their characteristic wavy patterns highlight the unique interaction between material and process.

With Jello, Campardo doesn’t design the forms of individual objects; instead, "he intervenes directly on the negative". As an analogue designer, he rejects any post-production alterations, placing his trust entirely in the process itself. The aesthetics of the pieces displayed at Galerie kreo are thus shaped by the very process that created them, complemented by distinctive colour combinations that further define each piece.

"If I had to imagine Campardo within a design nativity scene, he would be a figurine close to that group of figures who view design not as style but as language. “Styles come and go. Good design is a language, not a style,” said Massimo Vignelli. While the generation of Enzo Mari, Bruno Munari and Ettore Sottsass promoted an idea of breaking formats and experimenting across many disciplines, Campardo's approach, on the other hand, has focused on a single field, almost as an ideological choice," remarks Pinto.

Today, both the art and design worlds are marked by a fluidity that embraces the blending and slippage between different languages. In this context, Campardo embodies a timeless contemporaneity, pushing forward a body of work that is as methodical as it is conceptual. His only indulgences, it seems, are in the use of colour and the titles he gives his pieces.