Between design and sculpture: marble as perceptual illusion
Ossimoro Collection by Valeria Vaccaro (MIMESIS project). Photo: Studio Eller, Francesco Marano. Courtesy DILMOS
Ossimoro: a reflection on opposites
Within MIMESIS, a project presented in Via San Marco in Milan during the Design Week 2026, Valeria Vaccaro develops Ossimoro, a body of work built on the tension between opposing elements and on the material’s ability to shift identity. The project explores the constant gap between what an object appears to be and what it actually is, challenging immediate recognition of matter itself.
A collection between design and art
The project unfolds as a collection of furniture pieces and sculptural surfaces in which each element participates in the same perceptual operation. Mirrors, a bookshelf, wall-mounted shelves, and a table share a common principle: Carrara marble is transformed to resemble burnt wood, marked by veins, knots, and combustion traces that alter its reading.
The mirrors revisit the artist’s celebrated Tree of Life works, introducing a reflective surface that amplifies and multiplies their form. The iron bookshelf with marble shelves sets industrial structure against deceptive materiality, while the wall shelves and the glass table with sculptural legs—evoking Venetian mooring posts (briccole) or water-eroded trunks—construct a domestic environment in which wood is suggested yet denied in its substance.
The result is a space where the visual warmth of wood collides with the cold, compact nature of marble, generating a constant tension between what feels welcoming and what remains distant and artificial.
Matter as ambiguity: a contemporary mimesis
In Ossimoro, marble—a material associated with permanence and solidity—is pushed into imitating its opposite. It does not simply represent wood, but adopts its appearance while preserving its cold, mineral nature. This gap between what is seen and what is touched creates a perceptual short circuit that defines the entire work.
Within the context of MIMESIS, Valeria Vaccaro’s intervention constructs an environment in which design and sculpture are no longer separate, but coincide within the same gesture of material transformation, where every object becomes an exercise in visual and tactile ambiguity.
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