Sitting and seating. Milan, July

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "Sitting and seating. Milan, July"

Herbert White
6 years ago
Views:

1 Milan, July Sitting and seating Sitting and seating, a limited-edition collection of seats by Martino Gamper + Costellazioni, a limited-edition collection of lamps by Duccio Trassinelli On October 15, 2009 the Sitting & Seating exhibition will be inaugurated at Galleria Nilufar, in Via della Spiga 32, Milan. The vernissage will start at 6 p.m. It is an important occasion to compare two design generations and observe the work of two contemporary authors coping with wood. The exhibition will be open till November 14, from 10 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. (from Tuesday to Saturday) and from 3 to 7.30 p.m. on Mondays. The show will be held at the same time as Martino Gamper exhibition organised by Milan-located Triennale. Gamper and Trassinelli have a gap of 25 years and bring forward different abilities, but they try to answer the same questions: how to interpret the use from an expressive point of view, how to spread freedom in a lived-in space, how to delete cliché and aesthetic stereotypes going along new paths. While being different as for age and background, they are both heading towards a deep, eclectic search, free from the hindrances of the present-day taste, with strong ideas as for design aspects linked with theoretical and social issues. Sitting & Seating by Martino Gamper is a limited edition of three seats in oak, walnut and pinewood, created in just five specimens for each shape. Together with the two big Audio benches (here two specimens for each shape), it

2 was created in 2008 for Scenarios a multimedia and immaterial show on commission of Manifesta 7, Biennale Europea di Arte Contemporanea: the project was to turn the Fortress/Franzensfeste space with texts, sounds, and light, in a space being physically empty but filled with imaginary echoes. Gamper s seats and benches look oddly familiar, while being completely others. In particular, the seats have hyporeal shapes, where the neologism helps to define a ironic condition of reality distortion starting from the weakening of usual relations and producing shapes which could be really perfect in a painting by Magritte or a movie by Kaurismaki. Gamper has worked on the seat theme as from 2007, the same year as the London-located project 100 Chairs in 100 Days: the artist brought together 100 chairs in 100 days using only recycled chairs collected within two years. This plan, entering then Nina Yashar s private collection (Yashar being Galleria Nilufar founder) is the fulcrum of the exhibition at Milan Triennale, together with the installation called Total Trattoria and a site-specific project. In 2007 Gamper and Nilufar began their co-operation. During the Design Miami/Basel exhibition, Gamper proposed in the gallery spaces the action-design performance If Gio Only Knew, where he broke some Gio Ponti s furniture from the Sixties belonging to Hotel Parco dei Principi in Sorrento, to turn it immediately into further creations. The deconstruction and reconstruction project was then reproposed by Nilufar in Milan in 2008, with the exhibition Gio Ponti translated by Martino Gamper. Martino Gamper was born in Meran (South Tyrol) in He attended sculpture lessons at Vienna-located Fine Arts Academy and Applied Arts University, and then at the Royal College of Art, following the lessons of Ron Arad among others. At present he teaches at the Royal College of Art. The keywords of his work are handicraft talent, sudden intuition, deconstruction, design culture, social practice, sustainability, poetry, humour. Costellazioni by Duccio Trassinelli is a collection of lighting-up objects, proposed in a limited edition and created according to his studies and sketches from the Seventies. The woods used go from pine to chestnut, to precious walnut and cherry. The lighting-up plant uses low-voltage electromagnetic contacts. Hydra has an arm whose movement starts from the ground and reaches 4 metres. Cetus is an arc-lamp with a 360-degree rotating basement. Cassiopea is an oscillating source, with an adjustable light reaching all directions. Trassinelli was born in Florence in 1945 and then studied at Istituto Superiore di Disegno Industriale in his hometown, where he then remained as a teacher of Planning

3 Methodology for some ten years. In 1970 he founded the A.R.D.I.T.I. study, a real starting point for a group analysis of a new idea of exploitation and shapes in the world of furniture. In that period he brought about some historical projects, such as the B.T. lamp, produced by Sormani in 1972 and now permanently exhibited at MOMA in New York; the Memoria armchair, awarded by Bolaffi Casa in 1973 as month s design and now in Cassina Museum permanent collection; the Ponte lamp, reaching high quotations in international auctions. During his career Trassinelli shifted within heterogeneous spaces from plants to the prefabricated buildings industry and the planning of electronic instruments, from city environment and furniture to contracts for private and public companies. Furthermore he entered several invention patents. At present Trassinelli is still working in the lightingup technical design, an area where he was amongst the first in experimenting low-voltage. The keywords of his work are method, pioneering, technology as poetic resource, no compromises, technical know-how, modern tradition, play, freedom in space. Press office C-ZONE via Pestalozzi Milano mail benedetta.rutigliano@c-zone.eu tel fax GALLERIA NILUFAR via della Spiga Milano mail agira@nilufar.com tel fax Web sites

Audio benches by Martino Gamper, limited edition in two specimens as for shape, Italy 2008.

4 Audio benches by Martino Gamper, limited edition in two specimens as for shape, Italy Manifesta 7 Commission, Biennale Europea dell Arte Contemporanea, Bozen. Bench in oak, walnut and pine wood, 300 x 70 cm. Nilufar private Collection.

Sitting and Seating by Martino Gamper, limited edition in five specimens as for shape, Italy 2008.

5 Sitting and Seating by Martino Gamper, limited edition in five specimens as for shape, Italy Manifesta 7 Commission, Biennale Europea dell Arte Contemporanea, Bozen. Nilufar private Collection.

Sitting and Seating chair #2 by Martino Gamper, limited edition in five specimens, Italy 2008.

Chair of curved wood, pine, oak, walnut, 49 x 47 x 77 cm. Nilufar private Collection.

6 Sitting and Seating chair #2 by Martino Gamper, limited edition in five specimens, Italy Manifesta 7 Commission, Biennale Europea dell Arte Contemporanea, Bozen. Chair of curved wood, pine, oak, walnut, 49 x 47 x 77 cm. Nilufar private Collection. Sitting and Seating chair #3 by Martino Gamper, limited edition in five specimens, Italy Manifesta 7 Commission, Biennale Europea dell Arte Contemporanea, Bozen. Chair of curved wood, pine, oak, walnut, 48 x 45 x 77 cm. Nilufar private Collection.

Hydra by Duccio Trassinelli, limited edition, Italy 2009.

Pine, chestnut or a more precious kind, such as walnut and cherry.

7 Hydra by Duccio Trassinelli, limited edition, Italy The lamp movement is in all directions, with a 360-degree rotating basement and an arm whose movement starts from the ground and reaches 4 metres. Pine, chestnut or a more precious kind, such as walnut and cherry. Structure oiled with natural bee wax, counterweights in rusty iron, though controlled and stabilized. Cetus by Duccio Trassinelli, limited edition, Italy Arc-lamp, low-voltage electromagnetic contacts, two light points moving along the whole arc and bent in all directions. Structure in cherry wood oiled with natural bee wax.

Cassiopea by Duccio Trassinelli, limited edition, Italy 2009.

8 Cassiopea by Duccio Trassinelli, limited edition, Italy Flexible and oscillating low-voltage lamp, with adjustable light reaching all directions. Basement and light area in walnut.

TRAY TABLE CH417 Design: Hans J. Wegner DESCRIPTION

TRAY TABLE CH417 Design: Hans J. Wegner DESCRIPTION The tray table consists of two parts - a round tray and a collapsible base - that Wegner combined in a simple, flexible solution that simultaneously