Too many people are afraid of doing things wrong. But being curious about life around you, using your own brain and trying things out, is more fun. Asked what they were doing with them, they’d say they were looking for ideas. As an adult I taught for 20 years in Milan, and some of the students would come in with piles of magazines under their arms. I built a submarine at the age of ten but it just stayed on dry land. On Curiosity and InventivenessĪbove: Markus created this Inspirational Wall, a striking 3D Illusion mirror, 6 x 3 metres, for Hewlett Packard at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York, showing the great possibilities of digital printing. Markus lives between Munich, Milan and New York, and gives lectures and workshops as a guest professor at various art and design schools in France and Italy. His company have been pioneers in the industrial digital printing industry since the late 90s, working with Hewlett Packard to take digital printing to new heights. His spectacular multi-disciplinary projects attracted even more attention, and the reputation of the Markus Benesch brand grew steadily. A move to Italy followed, where Markus studied the work of the great Italian classical painters, and throughout this period, more and more people in the design world were looking in his direction.He was always fascinated by colour printing, and with industrialized printing laminates mostly unknown, he began to experiment on his own. While still at school he had taught himself enough about design to have Benetton commission him to design two of their stores. It didn’t work, but he survived the ignominy. He started early, designing and building a submarine at the age of nine. We spoke to Markus over the best part of an hour, and what he says tells us everything we need to know about him, about life in general and about his work. Creatora, he calls her, and cute as she is, she’s also the smartest kid on the block. His rather absurd but intelligent company logo tells us so: a simple line drawing of a head with a love/ heart for a mouth, to communicate with kindness and ease a twinkle in the eye to see the world, and the work his company does for it, with humour and wit a flexible brain to envision the non-existing, big ears to listen carefully and an antenna on the head to send out and receive messages, signs and symbols. Markus Benesch is one of them, and he would also appreciate the close link between the creative and the absurd. Only those artists and designers who have it in bucket loads are capable of constantly pushing the boundaries. It’s what makes artists and designers react positively to what many of us would regard as the absurd. It encouraged Albert Einstein to search for some of the answers to our universe. It prompted Leonardo to seek a means of defying gravity. Curious to the max: Interview with Markus Benesch
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