tailor-made contemporary wallcoverings


Draga&Aurel

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Draga&Aurel

Artists, designers

Established in 2007 by Draga Obradovic and Aurel K. Basedow, Draga & Aurel is a multidisciplinary studio and workshop for art, collectible design, and furnishing items. Armed with a diversified background in art, fashion, and craftsmanship, Draga and Aurel are widely known for combining original methods with an artistic approach to materials and composition. Pioneers in upcycling in the design sector, they began their journey by reinventing vintage furniture and objects in their own style and shaping the first Deshabillé and Heritage collections. Their 2009 debut at Milano Design Week marked the beginning of significant partnerships with furniture companies, firstly Baxter and Wall&Deco, followed by new ones throughout the years, including Visionnaire and Gallotti&Radice, and more recently Poltrona Frau and Giorgetti. In 2019, the couple staggered the crowds at Milano Design Week with a new personal project: the Transparency Matters collection, which explores the use and the possibilities of transparency, always related to lights and colors phenomena. From its launch, the studio has continued to develop the collection, gaining more popularity. Between art and design, Transparency Matters collectible design pieces find the perfect display in the most prestigious galleries, such as Rossana Orlandi Gallery, Nilufar Gallery and Todd Merrill Studio. Moreover, they often participate in art and design fairs. Their design production stands alongside the artistic output of Aurel K. Basedow, comprising powerful, evocative, and poetic works. At Draga & Aurel, art and design follow two parallel and complementary paths, in a continuous exchange that strengthens and sometimes inverts their meanings.

Main exhibitions and site-specific projects:

Design Miami with Todd Merrill Studio, Miami 2024
Salon Art+Design with Todd Merrill Studio, New York City 2024
Tinted hues at Nilufar, Milano Design Week 2024
Apartment of Wonder at Rossana Orlandi Gallery, Milano Design Week 2024
NOTITLE 02 with Rossana Orlandi Gallery, Nomad Circle, St. Moritz 2024
Salon Art+Design with Todd Merrill Studio, New York City 2023
Lake Como Design Festival with Rossana Orlandi Gallery, Como 2023
Bergdorf Goodman with Todd Merrill Studio, New York City 2023
L’appartamento with Artemest, Milano Design Week 2023
The Art of Light with Elle Decor, Milano Design Week 2023
Desacralized with Galerie Philia, Milano Design Week 2023
Space Couture at Nilufar 25, Milano Design Week 2023
Color Waterfall at Rossana Orlandi Gallery, Milano Design Week 2023
Design Miami with Todd Merrill Studio, Miami 2022
Salon Art+Design with Todd Merrill Studio, New York City 2022
Lake Como Design Festival with Galerie Philia, Como 2022
Coralia with Rossana Orlandi Gallery, Nomad Circle, Capri 2022
In the Mood for Seventies at Rossana Orlandi Gallery, Milano Design Week 2022
The Candy Box at Nilufar Gallery, Milano Design Week 2022
Per Speculum in Aenigmate at Contemporary Cluster, Brancaccio Palace, Rome 2022
Cabinet de Virtuosités by Galerie Philia (collective exhibition), Paris 2021
Golia at Rossana Orlandi Gallery, Milano Design Week 2021
Bokeh at Mint Shop London (collective exhibition), London Design Week 2021
Mimetic Dialogues, Nomad Circle, St. Moritz 2021
Ormeggi, Nomad Circle, Venice 2019

draga-aurel.com
@dragaandaurel #DragaAndAurel


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info &
stories

“"In our minds wallpaper is like a dress and, as such, we love to think that it can change to meet different occasions: become casual, glamourous, ironic, sophisticated, minimal. "”

Let’s talk about your creative method. How does it happen? While you are creating, what makes you go and say “Oh, this is going to be a wallpaper!”. Or is it more like a deliberate decision and you start from there, with a design or an inspiration in your mind?

 

In our minds wallpaper is like a dress and, as such, we love to think that it can change to meet different occasions: become casual, glamourous, ironic, sophisticated, minimal. 

Contamination plays a big part in our work, ranging from fashion, textiles, art, graphic design… Our different skills and past experiences, like Draga’s past as a textile designer and Aurel’s artistic background, allowed us to expand our techniques and the tools we can use, like screen printing, embroidery, materic or fluid paintings… 

Usually our creative process does not rely on a deliberate decision: we let something unexpected lead the way, be it a 70s shirt or a tear in a fabric or a seam… something that makes us realize “This will be a wallpaper!”.

From there, the process is the same one we use in our furniture design and artistic works, following both inspirations and research, the thing that has always been the distinctive feature of Draga&Aurel.  

I took a long look at all your designs for Wall&Decò and it was like an abridged lesson in Modern Art: there is optical, cut-outs, ready-made, materic painting, achrome… There is a lot of talking today about the relationship between Art (capital A) and interior design. As both artists and designers, how do you feel about this? 

 

Art, with all its myriad of nuances, surely played a big part in our education. It all started with attending Accademia delle Belle Arti and it has stayed with us since then. We might venture to say it was Her influence and inspiration to guide us to that place that is Draga & Aurel today, the meeting point of our souls, from design to fashion, from textiles to visual arts.

Art is at the center of our work, as research, inspiration and as a design method, in how we choose to develop a product, be it an object with no function at all or, on the opposite, an object that finds solely in function its own reason to exist.

 

A room dressed with one of your wallpapers. Inside, a character from History or Fiction (from literature all the way to movies). Who are they?

 

(Vivienne) Westwood: punk, icon, activist. She used to make her own shoes at five, design her dresses at twelve and now, at 77, she rides her bike through London and still wants to save the world. Brilliant, creative, a rebel at heart, she created her empire from scratch, always true to herself. Encouraging freedom of expression and being yourself without fearing judgement: her punk spirit is what allowed her to never surrender and leave her mark.  

 



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