Cardine Scarlatto

In the Cardine Scarlatto wallpaper I wanted to hold the exact moment when a mechanism closes on itself and becomes drawing. The scene I see, each time I look at it, is that of an imaginary workshop: large toothed wheels of different diameters mesh with one another, their teeth cut into precise angular points, their hubs pierced by bolted axles. Straight red bands and diagonal struts brace the gears like the beams of a bridge, with the firm precision of technical drawing. It is beat constructivism that guides the hand: a style that reduces the industrial world to a few decided shapes, printed in flat screenprint, where each colour occupies its own field without shading, and where a slight double pass of ink lets the honest labour of printing show between red and black.

The composition breathes: a dominant core of three large wheels closes at the top left between crossed beams, while smaller gears descend diagonally towards the bottom right, leaving the white of the ground open. Poster red, matt black, chalky white and a steel grey used sparingly on the teeth and the bolt heads make up a palette at once severe and lively. Close up, numbered rivets, fine hatching along the spokes and small clots of screen halftone tell of a metal that has worked.

For a teenager's room it is a self-assured gesture, never childish: mechanical energy turned into visual order. As in every WallZad project, the material rendering is studied so that this Cardine Scarlatto wallpaper keeps, on the wall, the same graphic tension it has on paper.