Interior Desecration – Steven Guarnaccia
Interior Desecration by Steven Guarnaccia / ISBN 9791254930762 / small-format 248-page hardback, 4.9 x 6.2 inches, published in 2024 by Corraini Editions / Italian/English edition, illustrated throughout
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“The illustrator’s job is a fabulous one: to add fantasy to the written text and make the emotion hidden between the words immediate to read. In Steven Guarnaccia’s drawings, there is also the irony with which he seasons his images and ‘demythologises’ what would at first glance remain extraneous, transforming all objects into something sympathetic and familiar.”–Michele De Lucchi
The spirit of the illustrations of Steven Guarnaccia is not didactic and informative – he does not want to show us the world as it is, as in an illustration of an encyclopedia or a medical text. He wants to get beyond reality, to peer into the deeper meaning of things. In this book, Steven takes us into his world with a dizzying array of images, showing us the world as he sees it and narrating the process through thoughts, sketches, ideas and – finally – finished drawings: not an invitation to get lost in the beauty of the illustrations, but to look at the world and illustration in a new way.
The illustrations – created during his long career in which he has collaborated with prestigious international companies including Pentagram, The New York Times, Los Angeles Magazine, Abitare, Domus – are accompanied by texts by Paola Antonelli, Pietro Corraini, Michele De Lucchi, Steven Heller, Julie Lasky and Marta Sironi.
