Text by CTRLZAK Studio
The mural is the oldest painting technique, because walls were the first painting surface which humans worked on. In the contemporary era, mural art finds in wallpapers a partner: both of them stand on walls and both of them need water and paint to take shape. Having this in mind we developed wallpapers that take over the role of the old murals, becoming site specific artworks accessible to many.
The first artwork Antiqua is a composition inspired by the architectural drawings illustrating Andrea Palladio’s famous ‘‘Four Books On Architecture’’, the most successful architectural treatise of the Renaissance and one of the most important books in the literature of architecture. With this work we attempt a connection between the old and new architectural space while playing with the perception of internal/external space.
At the same time through the study of history one learns that the sense of classic beauty is an ephemeral representation of culture connected with ancient traditions. That becomes the main reflection behind the work Nouveau Geisha where two different cultures are interweaved in a unique artwork representing the link between different formal languages and styles creating a new aesthetic principle for the global era.
For the bath environment we conceived two artworks: Medusae is a representation of jellyfish seen as graphic elements reminiscent of patterns belonging to traditional bathroom decorations. Techtubes on the other hand recreates a distorted hidden reality of modern plumbing components shown in a pseudo-axonometric, alluding to the technical drawings of the building itself.
All the wallpapers are manufactured by the Italian company Wall&Deco.
CTRLZAK is a hybrid studio that integrates different disciplines and cultures. The founders, Katia Meneghini and Thanos Zakopoulos, are both artists and designers in their own right. The Italian-Greek duo’s creations are inspired by their travels and experiences around the world and by their own rich cultural backgrounds.
The studio creates artworks, objects and spaces but– above all– situations where people can come together in order to make what really matters: human relations. CTRLZAK`s projects and extensive research into tradition and cultural context create a new hybrid future by learning from the past. Each project is a story waiting to be told, with a multitude of forms and endings. Each one experiments with diverse methods of narration where irony and symbolism go beyond aesthetics and functionality, in order to activate mechanisms of reflection.
TECHTUBES WET SYSTEM BY CTRLZAK / PHOTO BY WALL&DECÒ
TECHTUBES WET SYSTEM BY CTRLZAK 
TECHTUBES WET SYSTEM BY CTRLZAK
NOUVEAU GEISHA BY CTRLZAK / PHOTO BY WALL&DECÒ
NOUVEAU GEISHA BY CTRLZAK
MEDUSAE WET SYSTEM BY CTRLZAK / PHOTO BY WALL&DECÒ
MEDUSAE WET SYSTEM BY CTRLZAK
MEDUSAE WET SYSTEM BY CTRLZAK
CERSTYLE BY CTRLZAK / PHOTO BY WALL&DECÒ
CERSTYLE BY CTRLZAK / PHOTO BY WALL&DECÒ
ANTIQUA BY CTRLZAK / PHOTO BY WALL&DECÒ
ANTIQUA BY CTRLZAKREAD ALSO: THE SOLID BEAUTY OF ''CEMENT CHEMISTRY'' BY ELENA KAPOMPASOPOULOU