Backstage - A Sideview on the Moroso Design Collection has opened at designer Arne Quinze's Gallery 113 in Kortrijk, Belgium.

Curated by Patrizia Moroso, the show presents prototypes, out-takes and rare editions spanning the last 20 years from the Italian design brand's archive.

Collaborations with designers including Ron Arad, Patrizia Urquiola, Tord Boontje and Konstantin Grcic feature in the exhibition.

The show runs until September 14. Photos are by Pieterjan Mattan.

Here are some snapshots from the exhibition, plus below is an essay by Max Borka:

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BACKSTAGE / A SIDEVIEW ON THE MOROSO DESIGN COLLECTION
Production & concept by Gallery 113. Curated by Patrizia Moroso
GALLERY 113 / JUNE 13 - SEPT 14, 2008
WALLE 113 / 8500 KORTRIJK / BELGIUM

Following the highly successful Fragiles exhibition at Gallery 113 in Kortrijk, Belgium, a world-first will be showing there this summer: Backstage, a sideview on the Moroso collection. While Fragiles put the spotlight on a whole new generation of designers and their experiments with forgotten materials such as porcelain and glass, this new exhibition will focus on the merits of a woman who has an unmatched reputation for making such experiments possible.

Some twenty years after joining the firm that was founded by her parents in 1952, Patrizia Moroso has transformed Moroso from an old-fashioned upholstery business into the most innovative, creative, and famous producer of design furniture in Italy – and consequently everywhere else. Like few others, she has become a style-arbiter and increasingly helps to set the agenda for contemporary design, launching new trends such as the recent craze for floral patterning.

This is above all due to her bubbling personality and an unusual instinct for drawing on the talents of both well-established designers and unknown newcomers at exactly the right time, and cajoling them into performing at the top of their game.

The career of the world’s most successful designer, Patricia Urquiola, received major impetus from a long-term collaboration with her namesake, whom she describes as her ‘sister’. While Tord Boontje, followed most recently by the Scottish-Indian duo Doshi-Levien, have all been catapulted from nothingness to stardom by Moroso.

But Patrizia Moroso can also look back on a collaboration with nearly all the leading furniture designers of the past decade – from Ron Arad, Marcel Wanders, Ross Lovegrove and Alfredo Häberli, to Konstantin Grcic, and Arne Quinze, whose Deer seating elements and Quartz chair became part of the Moroso collection.

No other producer can pride itself in such a large and varied group of talents. More importantly, in each case, Patrizia Moroso succeeds in inspiring them to deal with new and unknown typologies, and to create a new highlight in their already impressive body of work.

This is first and foremost the result of the intensity and enthusiasm with which Patrizia throws herself into every new project, while explicitly stating that she can only work with designers whom she can also call friends.

In so doing, Moroso still continues the traditional family spirit that made Italian design a success. At the Moroso factory in Udine, an hour or so north of Venice, Moroso’s parents — Agostino and Diana, now in their 70s — come to work every day, as does her brother, Roberto, who handles the business side while Patrizia runs the creative side.

Their long-term ambition is to go more and more global: after recently doubling the surface of their Milan showroom and opening new showrooms in New York, Amsterdam and London, the spotlight is now on the new Moroso flagship store in Shanghai.

Since last October, Gallery 113, the exhibition space of the recently inaugurated Arne Quinze headquarters in Kortrijk, Belgium, also serves as a permanent display of the Moroso collection to the contract market, as part of an intense collaboration with the Arne Quinze Studio and the furniture brand Quinze & Milan.

From June 12, this permanent display will be enlarged with a unique and monumental exhibition, in which Patrizia Moroso, at the invitation of Arne Quinze, and for the first time ever, unravels her working method.

pread over 1,500m2, a rare selection of pictures, drawings, 3D models, prototypes and one-offs never seen before by the public will tell the story of twenty of Patrizia’s favourite pieces, including some that never went into production: from M.I. Ghini, the cartoonist whom she transformed into a designer when she first began as the creative director of Moroso, to the Bent armchair by Stefan Diez and Christophe de la Fontaine, and the brand new Quartz table by Arne Quinze.

Patrizia Moroso will comment on the pieces on-screen, in conversation with the British design critic Marcus Fairs, founder of Icon Magazine and the notorious digital newsletter dezeen. A must see event for anyone who wants a behind-the-scenes view of the world’s most dynamic design producer.

Max Borka