Resene Colour Collab: Dajiang Tai

Your designs are a magical combine of caprice, sophistication and an natural, handcrafted aesthetic. Who or what conjures up you?

For me, one of crucial facets of structure is to create a holistic expertise, so that there’s virtually no distinction between inside design and the constructing itself. The hope is at all times to create a seamless transition from exterior to inside, from sitting on a chair or lifting a teacup.

Ideally, each second within the expertise or the item one touches speaks to the very core concept of the constructing design, not in contrast to in movie director Wong Kar-wai’s motion pictures. This may be the rationale that most of the areas or objects created for initiatives I’ve labored on really feel bespoke or crafted, as I discover it laborious to assemble off-the-shelf merchandise to attain the purpose of a ‘full expertise’.

Inform us concerning the function that color performs in your design course of.

I’ve at all times admired these masters who’re extraordinarily good with colors, like Donald Judd or Josef Albers, as a result of I don’t really feel overly assured with color. The limitless alternative brings with it limitless chance and, with that, there’s at all times the potential for a greater consequence. That thought considerations me.

Within the observe of structure, I’ve progressively developed a manner of seeing color as an abstraction of actual materials slightly than merely a pigment to the floor. I’ve used that mind-set as a software to navigate space-making and that is mirrored within the art work I’ve produced right here with Thomas.

Your collaboration is predicated on the work of Li Huayi. What’s it that pulls you to his work?

On this collaboration, I used to be very within the concept of color versus materiality and the potential emotional connections that color and materials carry. I’ve at all times been captivated by the standard Chinese language or Japanese gold foil screens; they’re normally positioned in dimly lit tea rooms, every one in entrance of a candle.

There’s something very elemental about gold as a color and its metallic nature means it displays gentle softly. When a candle is positioned in entrance of a gold foil display screen, the reflection of candlelight turns into amplified by the golden glow and begins to outline the house in entrance of it, within the midst of a darkish room.

Li Huayi’s current gold foil portray collection, integrating gold foil with ink and brush strokes on silk, produces a singular luminescence, evocative of those screens.

Inform us about your alternative of color.

The gold, Resene Goldie, is one in every of Resene’s metallic vary and it’s a delight to play with. I discover gold may be very lovely when balanced fastidiously with darker tones corresponding to Resene Half Wooden Bark and Resene Nero, particularly when golden gentle shimmers into the depth of the shadows. That is what I discover in Li Huayi’s work.

He makes use of the natural construction as a solution to re-composition the golden canvas and the darkish brush strokes to interrupt the glow subtly into small shimmering items. There’s a nice Resene paint system known as Resene FX Crackle, which permits the highest layer of paint to have a cracked end. This impact offers the darkish color choice depth and lets the golden glow discover its manner into the cracks. Resene Haven varieties the moss on the kanuka department and it provides a way of life and fragility to the composition of calm, darkish tones and the burst of vitality from the golden glow.

I discover that very lovely.