During the Milan Design Week 2025, Dilmos presented Fragmenti, the new collection signed by Daniele Papuli: a dialogue between sculpture and object, set in a visionary scenario brought to life by the lightness and strength of an eternal material, paper. For this occasion, Papuli explores for the first time a sensory environment, where the furnishings become protagonists of a unique visual and tactile experience. From tables to vanity, wall-mounted bookcases to console, every piece from the collection is meticulously handcrafted by the artist, who describes himself as a “sculptographer.” Daniele Papuli, with Fragmenti, continues his thirty-year research exploring the use of paper as a sculptural and functional material: a fluid and dynamic investigation that merges the volumetric forms of sculpture and material expressions of paper itself.
Daniele Papuli thus reflects on everyday gestures, on the relationship with objects and on emotional involvement, all inscribed in an intimate and contemplative dimension emphasised by the suspended site-specific installation, called ULA. The installation, that guides the visitor through the collection, is a cluster of hand-cut white sheets of paper that filter the light, evoking the lightness and softness of clouds.
Daniele Papuli's collection unveils its material complexity, revealing a long and multi-staged crafting process. It all begins with the research and selection of papers of various types – recycled or new sheets from paper mills with forestry certifications – chosen for colour and weight. The paper undergoes a process of deconstruction, reduced to thin strips a few centimetres wide, through both mechanical and manual cutting. This way, new compositional morphologies are identified, and the structuring of volumes proceeds in a kind of polychrome inlay. The artist then combines and experiments with Isocell fibre, a cellulose-based compound used industrially, reshaped and mixed with natural earths and oxides to create new material and chromatic identities.
Both techniques reflect the evolutionary process of paper, often associated with fragility, which here becomes solid, malleable, and resilient. Daniele Papuli's work thus connects with and draws near to the very source of paper, the tree, while at other times it distances itself, suggesting other materials and visions. An emblematic example is the rectangular table that, at one corner, features a knot resembling that of a tree, while the grooves evoke the natural surfaces of bark. In other pieces, such as the round table, the bluish hues of the paper inlay call to mind organic shapes similar to marine fossils. All the furniture, characterised by a polychrome inlay combined with a cellulose paste, is then treated on the surface to create vibrant, pearlescent layers.