Danilo Correale

THE WARP AND THE WEFT

Installation View, Peep Hole, Milan

The Warp and the Weft consists of the production of five different tartan fabrics presented through a single large installation. Each of the tartans designed by the artist is composed of a series of colours chosen strictly based on the corporate colours of the logos of the most powerful financial institutions in the world. The five tartans distinguish various “clans” in a visible interweaving ready for a new transformation and introduction on the market. The five fabrics represent codes that refer directly to different geographical areas where the institutions are present with more influential economic assets: North America, South America, Africa, Europe and Asia.

The colour codes, of which tartan plaids are a tangible representation, underline the elaborate interweaving of direct and indirect relationships that regulate the world economy, proposing a reflection on colour theory and its application in the realm of corporate identity. For example, the most common colors among financial institutes are blue and red, which correspond to two broadly shared approaches. The former conveys trust, stability, credibility and clarity; the latter transmits energy, power, determination, passion and desire. Textiles also represent consumer goods that have historically been the basis for consolidating the routes of world trade and they are a metaphor for “apparent solidity”. Identification through a visual code and the central role it has always played in society is thus the starting point for The Warp and the Weft, a project for which Deleuze and Guattari, inter alia, are theoretical points of reference in their use of the terms “warp” and “weft” to describe the complex network of relations typical of finance in the era of globalization (A Thousand Plateaus), as are Hardt and Negri, who talk about the weaving of invisible economic relations between East and West (Empire).