While most people associate Alex Proba with her signature art style, which is characterized by vibrant colors and playful shapes, her friends and loved ones are reminded of her when they see something entirely different: food figurines. “Since childhood, I’ve collected fake food. When I travel, instead of a souvenir like a keychain of the Eiffel Tower, I would bring a fake baguette,” the artist shares. “Now all my friends give me things like that and it’s become crazy because these are so much more available.” Proba enjoys collecting food figurines so much, she even commissioned a ceramist to create a giant mortadella toast – an homage to her love of cold cuts cultivated from years of traveling to Italy for design week and having a partner who grew up in the country.
While most of us enjoy a classic cured meat and cheese sandwich, our love for it stops there. But for Proba, it inspired her latest tile collection, Aurora, in partnership with Concrete Collaborative. It’s characterized by rich burgundies and pinks with a mid-century modern kind of chicness, a detour from her signature style but not a complete departure. With this collection, she hints at a new era of creativity – just don’t call it colorless. “There’s not many opportunities for me to explore less color, just because people expect me to always do color. I love color, my house and everything is full of color, so it’ll never be colorless in my world,” Proba insists. “But there’s a lot of passion I have in exploring a muted palette.”
Unlike other artists who might choose to prepare colors ahead of time or research color or trend studies, Proba relies on intuition: “I just start designing in whatever feels good.” Because color plays such a vital role in this work, it was incredibly important to the Concrete Collaborative Partner, Kate Balsis, that they be manufactured true to Proba’s original designs. “It was days of trial and error with the colors, the mix, and even the grind,” Balsis says. “Because as we grind and polish the tiles, it affects how the colors come out.”
The collection of eight tiles incorporates classic Italian architectural elements – like marble and terrazzo – elevating the playful, organic shapes and squiggles reminiscent of cold cuts. “The inspiration of mortadella and salami is so unique,” Balsis remarked. “The collection references these really cool shapes but then the tonality and texture of terrazzo gives it a distinct point of view. In so many tiles, I feel there’s a lot of sameness and this is not anything I’ve ever seen before which is why it’s been so successful. I think people are wanting something they haven’t thought of or seen before.”
To learn more about the Aurora collection by Alex Proba and Concrete Collaborative, visit concrete-collaborative.com.
