TOILETPAPER
is a picture-based magazine founded in 2010 by artist Maurizio Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari. Over the last three years, photos published in the magazine have been applied to a variety of products and media, exploring the multiple possibilities for images to live beyond their original format.
TOILETPAPER has been featured in prestigious magazines and institutions from the Highline Billboard in NYC's Chelsea to Paris' Palais de Tokyo’s front windows; from a special edition of Libèration to a contribution with M le Monde’s Carte Blanche section, as well as a fashion story in New York Magazine’s Spring 2014 fashion issue.
Exceptional collection of plates, mugs and tablecloths born out of the collaboration between Maurizio Cattelan’s and Pierpaolo Ferrari’s magazine
Black humor dipped in pastel colors: born out of the meeting between Seletti, Italian design company, and Toiletpaper, Maurizio Cattelan’s and Pierpaolo Ferrari’s image-only magazine and the Italian design company Seletti an unusual and exceptional collection of plates, mugs and tablecloths,bowls, metal glasses, backing dishes, the teapot, tea towels and object like the soaps, stickers, mirrors and the Umbrella.
A selection of images from the magazine become the decorative motif of the Toiletpaper-Seletti design collection. a kitchen plunger, a rampant horse, the severed fingers (already on display on Manhattan’s High Line billboard) and a pulp interpretation of the famous “I love you”, A toad in a sandwich, the apple-shaped Yin & Yang symbol and the eye with the eyelash curler; a fish full of precious gems and a table set with “unexpected” guests are the images towering over the tablecloths.
Tin, oilcloth and melamine are the materials used in the Toiletpaper-Seletti collection, perfectly aligned with the pop spirit of the magazine: cheap and widespread, never sectional.
"Seletti wears Toiletpaper is, by far, the more up-to-the-minute range of homeware products proposed on the market today. Its exclusive character is not given by economic inaccessibility but, instead, by the intellectual audacity of those who choose to buy it. " says Stefano Seletti, face and mind of the homonymous design brand.
The novel idea of creating a line which combines democratic and common materials such as tin and plastic with definitely unexpected images have declared the undisputed success of the Seletti wears Toiletpaper collection. The style, a sort of label given by the unique humor and unlimited desire to experiment, is successful because applicable to a wide range of products, sold around the world, from the MOMA museum in New York at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and at The Corner in London. The Seletti wears Toiletpaper fever spreads, and it is only the beginning.
From the well renown collection “Estetico Quotidiano” born ten years ago to “Hybrid”, where Chinese and English traditional images of porcelain were melted into single objects, Seletti has kept surprising and astounding each time. “I’ve been a Toiletpaper fan since its first issue, and I immediately wished to use those marvelous images for our products” – declares Stefano Seletti, owner and art director. “I kept thinking about how to get those photographs into our customers’ homes. It only took one meeting for Maurizio, Pierpaolo and me to be in tune with each other and to share the idea to couple democratic and familiar materials like tin and plastic with decisively unexpected images”.
“Right from the start we liked the idea that Toiletpaper was a label that could be applied to a broad series of objects: magazines, books, plates, mugs and tablecloths. Pierpaolo and I are like sadistic scientists: everything that’s around us can be infected by the TP virus, we continually test different samples and we analyze the results, so that Toiletpaper can become a style, and not just a photographic one”, says Maurizio Cattelan. “Just like Toiletpaper’s images, the collection designed with Seletti has a vintage charme; the tin mugs and plates look like they were just taken out from a Fifties’ kitchen pantry, the oilcloths from the drawers of a suburban inn”.
“We often have fun by making our pictures become objects, clothes, accessories” – says Pierpaolo Ferrari. “Toiletpaper’s images can become both a bathing suit and a Formula 1 car. The important thing is not to betray the spirit and nature of the magazine, which is ironic and unsettling at the same time. Today, thanks to Seletti, some images have become real..