G A E TA N O P E S C E A G E O F C O N TA M I N AT I O N S
Gaetano Pesce: The Agony and the Ecstasy Glenn Adamson The influence of Gaetano Pesce on current design is pervasive, in a way that is impossible to miss yet
All of this may sound obscure. And in a certain way, it is; Pesce’s oeuvre has a cavernous profundity which
difficult to track. Grasping for an image to describe his importance, I think of a river spreading into a great
rewards deep exploration. But paradoxically, his objects also declare themselves on their surfaces, in
delta. Names can be put to the various tributaries: figurative, speculative, and narrative design; experimental
ways that even a child (perhaps especially a child) can read. When Pesce wants to speak to the human
auto-production; liquid modernism; critical deconstruction; organic architecture; postmodernism. But for all
condition, he draws a face. When he wants to evoke rapid transformation, let’s say in a table or chair, he
that his ideas saturate the creative landscape, Pesce himself, mighty source that he is, remains elusive.
uses fluid pouring techniques. To express sorrow, war, redemption, he depicts streams of blood. This begins to account for his work’s sheer eclecticism, so different from the codified and coherent oeuvres of
This is itself by design. A true avant gardiste, Pesce has always played hard to get. It’s a mode of operation
so many other major designers.
virtually unknown among younger practitioners, who are generally highly attuned to the reception of their work. They want their story told, and they want to be a part of that process. Pesce, to put it bluntly, doesn’t
Though Pesce’s outlook is entirely secular, his works have the urgency of religious iconography—and
give a damn. He is rightly proud of his achievements: his involvement in the landmark exhibition Italy:
here we feel the powerful undercurrent of his Italian cultural inheritance. They shudder and moan. They
The New Domestic Landscape, at the Museum of Modern Art (1972); presentations at the Musée des Arts
slump under their own weight. They part their lips in bliss. Above all, they move, in rhythms that travel
Décoratifs in Paris (1975), and later, a retrospective at the Centre Pompidou (1996); groundbreaking interiors
both within each work, and across the entire expansive range of his output. An initially puzzling thing
like that of the Casa Carenza (1972) and the offices of the advertising agency Chiat/Day (1994). But he has
about Pesce is that he claims to have no interest in repetition, yet routinely alludes to and borrows from
very little interest in being digested into a neat package. That aversion comes partly from personality, partly
other artists’ work, and returns repeatedly, even obsessively, to certain of his own projects. The Seaweed
from principles. The only continuity, in his view, is change; he is deeply antipathetic to what Jean-François
furniture he made beginning in 1991 recalls the Rag Chair he made twenty years earlier; he has adopted
Lyotard called the grand récit (“grand narrative”) of history.
his 1969 Up5 and Up6 chairs as a personal emblem, rendering these in multiple scales and idioms. This seems contradictory, but it is so only if we bring to his work an expectation of orderly progression, and
To do justice to Pesce’s work from the two most important decades of his career—which is the intention
Pesce has never embraced order in anything. His work is a continuous assault against the artificiality of
of the present exhibition and catalogue—is not necessarily to say what it all means. For him, the whole
linear constructs and closed systems. Instead, his ideas whirl in constant circulation, periodically bubbling
point is to generate objects and images that insinuate themselves into daily life, while still remaining open
up to the surface and then submerging again, as he continues, unpredictably, onward.
to interpretation. His works resist closure, and welcome new association. So there is no point trying to chop his oeuvre up into discrete sections. You’d have better luck taking a cleaver to an ocean wave. Like
A clear sign of this restlessness is the multidisciplinarity of Pesce’s practice. Trained originally as an
anything liquid, Pesce’s work can best be understood in terms of flow, without origin nor destination: just
architect, he has made buildings and urbanist plans, as well as furniture, objects, jewelry, resin drawings,
raw energy, newly configured in each moment. One might even want to distinguish between his “work,”
and more, oscillating continually between one-off speculations and serial mass production. He covers the
which is theoretical and methodological, and his “works,” which are manifestations or documents of that
waterfront. While this multiplicity is clearly a matter of disposition—put simply, he bores easily—it is also an
thinking.
implicit critique of circumscribed professionalism. Like the modernists of the 1920s and ‘30s, he sincerely
big ideas, too big for history as the ancients knew, which is why they also invented comedy and tragedy.
believes in design’s responsibility to reshape the world. But he has departed radically in his methods:
These modes are Pesce’s, too. His work and works are full of life, in all its messy, confusing, provisional,
instead of rationalism, he offers wild disruptive energy, provocation. He posits wholly new ways of living just
flawed, maddening, gloriously overflowing reality. And it’s a funny thing, life. Whether from sorrow or joy,
to see what that might look like.
or a little of each, it usually ends in tears.
The flip side of this contempt for narrow definitions is the wide embrace that Pesce gives to the world. Like Robert Rauschenberg—one of a few artists who can legitimately be described as a direct influence on him—he has maintained an insatiable creative appetite over the course of a whole career. He is a lover of things, a sensualist. This quality bridges such seemingly disparate statements as his Brobdingnagian
Moloch lamps and vacuum-packed Up furniture, and his later “skin” drawings and Felt furniture. In each case, Pesce’s primary objective was simply to put something into the world that was palpably, undeniably new. It’s possible to think through these works conceptually—as I have tried to do in the entries that compose the rest of this catalogue. Moloch dislodges the domestic environment from its customary scale. The Up5 and
Up6 chairs are a blow-up manifesto, advancing Pesce’s version of a feminist politics. The “skins” comment on the distortion that necessarily occurs in any act of documentation. The Felt pieces continue Pesce’s longstanding exploration of the dialectic between the handmade and the industrial. But every one of these works is also assertively physical. They are meant to be experienced first with the perceiving body, the encounter with the mind deferred, at least for a little while. So Pesce is always trying to escape normative consciousness. To put this in psychoanalytic terms, his work charts a path to the superego—the most abstract dimension of the psyche—but always via the id, that dark domain of fear and desire, the deep-seated world of the Jungian archetype. If you truly open yourself to Pesce’s vision, you will find that he challenges you at every level, intellectually, physically, ethically, even sexually. He shows you the violence that logic can do to an instinctive human being. He exposes the greatest of falsehoods, that it is rationality that organizes our thoughts. Come to him wanting a flower vase, and he will give you suffering and pain and the joy of broken bondage. He will give you agony, which is derived from the Greek agein, “to celebrate”—as in a ritual contest of athleticism, a struggle of the body.
WORKS
Yeti Armchairs and Pouff, 1968 In 1969, Pesce had his first of several important exhibitions in Paris, in this case at the Louvre. He presented a group of his Up5 chairs and, in a separate space, the Yeti seating furniture. His first asymmetrical chair designs, the Yeti were his response to time spent in Nepal and Japan, where he had had encountered Buddhism. He recorded monks chanting in a temple, then reversed the sounds, producing an eerie, unearthly sound. This “Yeti Song” was released on a limited-run vinyl pressing, and was played in the gallery at the Louvre. The soft, yielding furniture was produced by Cassina but only to prototype stage—Pesce recalls that fewer than ten were realized.
Gaetano Pesce for Cassina Yeti Armchair, 1968 Polyurethane foam and fabric upholstery 39.5 x 47.25 x 43.25 inches 100 x 120 x 110 cm Edition of 15
Gaetano Pesce for Cassina Yeti Pouff, 1968 Polyurethane foam and fabric upholstery 22 x 40 x 38 inches 55.9 x 101.6 x 96.5 cm Edition of 15
Interior for Casa Carenza, Padua, 1969-1972 A consistent theme, running across Italian radical design of the 1960s and ‘70s, was a desire to revolutionize everyday life by transforming its physical setting. The domestic interior in particular was a territory to be contested. At least, it was in theory. In practice, the avant garde of this period rarely found clients who were willing to unleash such experiments in their own homes. So when Pesce did get an opportunity to unsettle bourgeois norms, in the apartment of his friend Alberto Carenza, he made the most of it. Pesce had already completed a school in Padua for this special client. In that project, he had willfully departed from the military-style regimentation common in education at that time, instead making a joyful, colorful and varied environment. He took a related approach in the apartment, conceiving it in an intentionally fragmentary manner. Key works from Pesce’s contemporaneous work with Cassina were included—from the Up and Moloch series—and he also created bespoke furnishings, including a mighty wardrobe, a set of bookshelves, a gridform clothes hanger, and a set of exterior planters. These latter elements constituted a fascinating range of response to his earlier grid-based work, as a member of an art collective called Group N. Pesce had spent only a short time in this initiative, which was oriented toward geometric work, in the early 1960s. He later came to repudiate their methods, which is not surprising, as the fluid gestures and embrace of chance operations in his mature work are diametrically opposed to seriality. The Carenza commission captures the precise moment of this rupture.
Some of the elements he conceived for the interior are geometrically composed, particularly the wall hanger—though even here, the arbitrary introduction of white in a field of red and the variation in finish, observable when up-close, introduce a degree of individuality. Most indicative of Pesce’s future direction is the imposing bookshelf, which has the appearance of a ruin. It is made of wood with expanding foam paint—materially different from the slightly later Golgotha Table, but clearly working toward that idiom, and in the same palette (red and black, the traditional colors of revolution). Even more significant, given the later direction of his work, are the craggy irregular contours of the shelves. In this design, for the first time, we see Pesce embracing irregularity in a large-scale furniture form. It would be difficult to overstate the stature of the Carenza commission in Pesce’s ouevre. On the one hand, it served as a compendium of his explorations to date: his early interest in seriality and mathematics, his brief turn toward Pop design, and above all his fluency with materials, including wood, metal, resin, and concrete. The apartment also looked ahead, to the radicalism documented in the landmark 1972 exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, and to Pesce’s own, ongoing search for generative incoherence. As a surviving body of material, it serves as the foundation atop which his later work was built.
Gaetano Pesce for Bracciodiferro Wall clothes hanger from Casa Carenza, Padua, 1972 Metal and brass, polyurethane and resin coated in red lacquer 90.5 x 47.25 x 6.75 inches 230 x 120 x 17 cm
Gaetano Pesce Carenza bookcase from Casa Carenza, Padua, 1972 Wood painted with polyurethane and liquid resin in red and black 112.25 x 254 x 23.75 inches 285 x 645 x 60 cm
Gaetano Pesce Wardrobe from Casa Carenza, Padua, 1972 Wood painted with polyurethane and liquid resin in red and black 113.5 x 141.75 inches 288 x 360 cm
Up5 (Donna) and Up6 Ottoman, 1969 Perhaps Pesce’s most famous design, and one that he has returned to repeatedly in recent years, is the Up5 (Donna) chair—here paired with an Up6 footstool. The numbering of these objects designates their place in a larger collection, which included a range of other seating forms. Each design within the series is made of a self-inflating foam. The pieces were shipped in flat vacuum packs, and when opened, expanded into their full form. In the case of the Up5, Pesce exploited this marvelous technical conceit to create a voluptuous female form, like a Venus surfacing from the waves. Pesce intended this allusion to feminine stereotype to be understood critically. Raised entirely by strong women (his father died when he was a toddler), he has always professed a commitment to feminism. The image is completed, then, by the Up6, which symbolizes a ball and chain. When evaluating the politics of the design—which has the caricaturesque lines of a Brigitte Bardot-style pin-up, and flatly depicts women as victims—it is important to bear in mind that it predated second-wave feminism. Cassina actually advertised the Up series using photos with sexy female models, just like the rest of their furniture. So it is of its place and time. Within that context, it is a remarkable statement, a politically progressive message slipped deftly into a commercial context.
Gaetano Pesce for B&B, Italy Up5 (Donna) with Up6 Ottoman from Casa Carenza, Padua, 1969 Polyurethane foam structure and elastic fabric upholstery 42.5 x 42.25 x 51.25 inches 108 x 107 x 130.2 cm
Moloch Lamp and Moloch Pendant Lamp, 1971 Pesce’s long-running collaboration with the visionary manufacturer Cesare Cassina reached its provocative peak with Bracciodiferro, an experimental project workshop which operated from 1969 to 1975. Though the name literally means “arm wrestling,” here it refers to a rude Italian gesture—meaning, essentially, up yours. This aptly captures the intention of the initiative, which Pesce proposed as a way of opening up a provocative space within the normative world of furniture manufacturing. Pesce realized several important works that took advantage of the complete freedom of the situation, including the Golgotha table and chairs. The Moloch lamp is an outlier in Pesce’s career, an unusual foray into the idiom of Pop design (the main other example is his contemporaneous Up7 (Piede), a foam seat in the shape of a huge foot). As an idea, it could not be simpler: just a giant version of an Anglepoise desk lamp. By applying such a radical scale shift to a usually unobtrusive object, however, Pesce achieved a result that is actually quite frightening, hovering overhead like a cyclopean monster. (The original Moloch was a deity mentioned in the Bible as demanding human sacrifice.) One possible reading is that if we are to have industrially produced furniture, this is how it should appear—with all the sublime and intimidating power that actually exists in the factory system. The Moloch also works as a brilliant comment on Bracciodiferro itself—a sort of proof of concept. Pesce showed how very easy it is to shift everyday reality, thus critiquing the weakwilled conformity of most commercial design all the more effectively. These two examples from the Moloch series— the standard standing floor lamp, and a ceilinghung variant—are both from the Alberto Carenza apartment, and are among the first examples of the design to have been produced.
Gaetano Pesce for Bracciodiferro Moloch floor lamp from Casa Carenza, Padua, 1971 Metal 90.5 x 122.75 x 33.75 inches 229.9 x 311.8 x 86 cm
Gaetano Pesce for Bracciodiferro Moloch pendant lamp from Casa Carenza, Padua, 1971 Anodized aluminum and painted aluminum 24.75 x 47.25 x 47.25 inches 63 x 120 x 120 cm
Golgotha Table, 1972 Majestic yet unsettling, the Golgotha Table is one of Gaetano Pesce’s greatest works. In plan, it assumes the shape of a tomb; in elevation, it courses with blood-like fluid. It is both a building and a body. The allusion is direct—to Christ’s crucifixion, which occurred on Golgotha Hill outside the walls of Jerusalem—but the intention less so.
Clearly this work relates not to Christianity only, but also to the reality of political violence, which has been an important concern for Pesce throughout his career. We should view Golgotha in the dark light of that precedent; it is a reminder that grandeur and pain, devotion and abjection, are often joined.
Obviously, the Golgotha is an object about religion—itself a rarity in avant garde design. In it we see the imprint of Catholicism on Pesce, an Italian inheritance, profound, deep and complex. But the design speaks even more broadly than that, to the intensity of any ritual experience, or rite of passage. Seated at the table, one might well feel in attendance at some apocalyptic communion. All the more so as Pesce designed an accompanying set of chairs, formed by rigidifying drapes of fabric in resin, a reference to the Shroud of Turin. A final touch of the spirit is present in the dripping “blood,” a resin that Pesce applied to the brick-like units of the table. He completed this procedure upside-down, so that once the whole piece was completed was inverted, the liquid would seem to rise to the sky—a gesture of transcendence.
The present version of the Golgotha Table was the first Pesce created; it has been in a private collection since, and this is its first public display in America.
Even this powerful religious narrative, however, fails to exhaust the meaning of the Golgotha. In the previous decade, Pesce had created several works involving the imagery of flowing blood. Most notorious was his Piece per una Fucilazione, which he staged in Padua in 1967. This haunting performance began with the miming of an actor being executed with a shot to the head, as a sinister totalitarian voice was heard through speakers. A river of red fluid then began running through the entire theater, surrounding the audience; only when a team of uniformed attendants silently wiped up the blood was the evening over.
Golgotha Table Drawing (1972)
Gaetano Pesce for Bracciodiferro Golgotha Table, 1972 Bricks of glass, foam, and polyester resin 28.25 x 118.25 x 39.25 inches 72 x 300 x 100 cm
Arca Desks, 1972 Alongside his Golgotha Table, Pesce created a pair of desks in an identical style and construction technique. Placed back-to-back they form a table, and were initially used in this way in the designer’s own residence in Venice. The title Arca recalls the Biblical ark of the covenant, though he has said that he was more directly referring to a medieval monument in the Basilico San Domenico in Bologna. The desks have an architectural quality, suggesting two piers holding up a great cathedral’s vault.
Gaetano Pesce for Bracciodiferro Arca Desks, 1972 Wood bricks and gel coat each: 30 x 104 x 33 inches x 264.2 x 83.8 cm Installation view:76.2 Wendell Castle Remastered, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY, 2015-2016
Installation view: Wendell Castle Remastered, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY, 2015-2016
Golgotha Chairs, 1972 These chairs were developed to accompany Pesce’s Golgotha Table, and occupy a similarly important position in his oeuvre. They mark the first of many times that he realized a seating form through a single rapid gesture, which assumes permanence through the action of materials themselves. The process of making the chair begins with a dacron-filled fiberglass cloth. This is laid over an armature of rods and hooks, and soaked with a spray of resin. A person sits down into the structure, leaving the impression of their body, which is preserved when the resin hardens. This literalizes the common notion that a chair is anthropomorphic, and also refers to the Shroud of Turin—the fabric relic that supposedly captured the likeness of Christ when it was used to dry his face, prior to his crucifixion. Symbolically, this serves to connect the chair to the dramatic religiosity of the table; it also is a quintessential example of Pesce’s way of infusing individuality into a serially produced form.
Gaetano Pesce for Bracciodiferro Golgotha Chair, 1972 Dacron filled and resin soaked fiberglass cloth 39.5 x 19 x 26 inches 100.3 x 48.3 x 66 cm
Gaetano Pesce for Bracciodiferro Golgotha Chair, 1972 Dacron filled and resin soaked fiberglass cloth 39.5 x 19 x 26 inches 100.3 x 48.3 x 66 cm
Pratt Chairs, 1984 In 1984, having arrived relatively recently in New York City, Pesce had only a limited studio at his disposal. He was, however, maintaining an active schedule of teaching, including at Pratt Institute of Art and Design. He used the facilities there to create an extraordinary series of chairs, naming them for their site of production. Though made using a single mold, Pesce employed nine different formulae of the resin, resulting in a continuum from soft to hard. The most flexible simply flops to the ground in a pile, like a piece of 1960s Process Art. The most rigid is rock-like, more like a marble sculpture. Somewhere in between, say at 5 or 6, is a chair you would actually want to sit on. Pesce has devilishly commented that the project exposes the absurdity of distinguishing art from design—after all, if it’s just a matter of changing a chemical recipe, how interesting can it be? The Pratt Chairs are also fascinating for their iconography. Each symbolizes a value that Pesce felt was necessary to the creative process: bread, for sustenance; two bodies entwined, for sex; a cross, for belief; a labyrinth, for searching. These various signs are embedded within the thickness of the chair.
Gaetano Pesce Pratt Chair, 1984 Polyurethane and metal 37 x 19 x 19 inches 94 x 48 x 48 cm
Gaetano Pesce Pratt Chair, 1984 Polyurethane 36.75 x 20 x 21 inches 93.3 x 50.8 x 53.3 cm
Gaetano Pesce Pratt Chair, 1984 Polyurethane 35.25 x 19.5 x 20.25 inches 89.5 x 49.5 x 51.4 cm
Felt Sofa from Marc-André Hubin’s Apartment, Paris, 1985-1986 One of Pesce’s best-known contract designs is the Feltri chair, created for Cassina in 1987. Ingenious in its simplicity, the form is simply a curve of colored felt which has been upholstered and secured into a horizontal seat. As the felt spreads upwards and outwards, it takes on the form of a great collar or cape, enshrouding the sitter. While he was working toward this design, Pesce also developed one-off seating in the same material (an investigation paralleling, but distinct from, his felt cabinets). This set of chairs, which can be conjoined into a sofa, is from an important interior that he completed for the residence of Marc Hubin, a client based in Paris. Well over a decade after the Carenza apartment, Pesce again used this domestic commission as a cross-section of his current creativity. The chairs have a hint of figuration to the front—with apertures that could be read as eyes and a nose—but even more expressive is the slump of the material as it curls into the upright of the back. The slight variation in color range exemplifies Pesce’s interest in individualization across a series, a consistent theme in his career.
Gaetano Pesce
Felt Sofa from Marc-André Hubin’s Apartment, Paris, 1985-1986 Felt 113 x 33.25 x 40 inches 287 x 84.5 x 101.6 cm
Installation view: Wendell Castle Remastered, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY, 2015-2016
Sansone ll, 1986-1987 On a purely technical level, the Sansone ll table is among Pesce’s most ingenious designs. They are made by pouring variously colored resins down straight tubes on to a flat surface. Once cured, this monolithic object is inverted: the free-poured puddle forms the table’s top, and the resin left in the tubes serves as the legs. Each work is variable, not just in its internal polychrome composition, but also in its actual dimensions. Pesce conceived the project for Cassina, intentionally pushing the manufacturer to accept a single design that could take an infinite number of forms. He was interested in activating the creativity of the company’s fabricators, encouraging them to experiment with the novel process, and even ‘draw’ with dripped resin on the flat surface before the pour, an image that would of course be visible on the top when the piece was flipped. In a reprise of the Golgotha Table and Chairs of about a decade earlier, he again paired the table with a contrasting chair design, then named them for the ancient mythological characters Samson and Delilah.
Gaetano Pesce for Cassina Sansone II, 1986-1987 Epoxy resin with metal grid, PVC, and polyurethane 29.5 x 54 x 54 inches 74.9 x 137.2 x 137.2 cm
Gaetano Pesce for Cassina Sansone ll, 1987 Epoxy resin with metal grid, PVC, and polyurethane 29.25 x 46 x 46 inches 74.3 x 116.8 x 116.8 cm
Prototype for Les Ateliers, 1986-1987 Pesce tells an amusing story about the origin of this imposing cabinet. He was teaching at Les Ateliers (École nationale supérieure de création industrielle) in Paris, and working with a student that he describes as “intelligent, but not quite showing his intelligence.” He quickly sketched an idea that the student might try, and was bemused when he later returned to the studio to find his drawing thrown into the trash. He retrieved it, brought it to Italy, and presented the design to Cassina, who prototyped it as part of a series known as the Unequal Suite (also including a variation on the Sansone table and the very successful I Feltri chair). Constructively, it is an early example of an approach that Pesce has often returned to since, in which the work is built in wood but then surfaced with more flexible and colorful materials. The cabinet was exhibited at the Milan Furniture Fair in 1987 but never put into production.
Gaetano Pesce for Cassina Prototype for Les Ateliers, 1986-1987 Wood, polychrome epoxy, resin, and shellac 93 x 56.75 x 22.75 inches 236 x 144 x 58 cm
Felt Cabinets, 1987-1991 Pesce has often said that he wants to use the materials of today—the substance of industry, not traditional craft. He wants to use them in unconventional ways, too, infusing them with individuality and expression. This is seen in his poured resin furniture, and his painterly skins; and also in an important series of work he completed in the 1980s, using sheets of standard industrial felt. It’s tempting to relate these works to the earlier sculptures of Robert Morris, which use the same material. But in fact the method that Pesce uses is exactly contrary. Morris was attracted to felt for somewhat similar reasons—he too liked to work in the margins of industry—but he arrived at his forms through simple actions of slicing and draping, allowing the heavy material to find its own form. Pesce, by contrast, saturated the felt with resin, so that he could compose shapes. A better analogy would be to his own 1972 Golgotha Chair, which is hung over an armature and then similarly fixed. The control that Pesce was able to achieve with this technique allowed him to pursue one of his favorite themes, figuration. One of the cabinets seen here is frankly representational of the human form, the others more tacitly so; together, the variation in forms attest to the powerful inventiveness that Pesce can bring to a single technical solution. The anthropomorphic cabinet is of special interest, given Pesce’s strong belief in the communicative power of this motif. He often contrasts figuration to the distancing effects of modernist abstraction—a more direct version of the semiotic emphasis typical of 1970s and 1980s postmodern historicism (from which he firmly distances himself). He has used such imagery at multiple scales—from drawings all the way up to an architectural site plan. Arguably, it is in furniture that his use of the human figure is at its most relatable, or perhaps confrontational, meeting its user on level terms.
Gaetano Pesce Felt Cabinet - Human Shape, 1987-1991 Urethane, felt, and papier-mâchÊ 112 x 34 x 19.75 inches 284.5 x 86.4 x 50.2 cm
Gaetano Pesce Felt Cabinet with Drawers, 1987-1991 Wood, papier-mâchÊ, felt, and resin 77.75 x 33.5 x 19.5 inches 197.5 x 85.1 x 49.5 cm
Gaetano Pesce Felt Chest and Closet, 1987 Felt, resin, epoxy, wood, and paper 84.75 x 59 x 45.25 inches 215 x 150 x 115 cm
Etagère en forme de croix (Shelf in the shape of a cross), 1987 Christianity is a deep-running current in Pesce’s work, unsurprisingly for an Italian designer who is deeply involved in questions of the body and spirit. The year 1972 marked a moment of full-contact engagement with religion, in the monumental Golgotha and Arca Tables, and the important speculative architecture project Church of Solitude, which was featured in the bellwether exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape at the Museum of Modern Art. This shelf, though it dates significantly later, is similarly trenchant and metaphorical. It takes the form of an upside-down cross—bringing to mind the inverted crucifixion of St. Peter, who felt he was unworthy to be martyred in the same manner as Jesus Christ. A drawing by Pesce, related to the design, shows a figure crucified upon it in just this way. The piece has the combination of high concept and deadpan functionalism that is particular to Pesce’s work, with the holy cross simply turned into a rectilinear series of cubbyholes. Yet it should not be seen as sacrilegious, any more than as literally emblematic of belief. Rather, it is an example of the way Pesce deploys potent imagery in a way that is available to interpretation, an “open work” (opera aperto), as he often says.
Gaetano Pesce Etagère en forme de croix (Shelf in the shape of a cross), 1987 Polyurethane and expanded clay 80 x 75.5 x 16.75 inches 203 x 192 x 42.5 cm
Seaweed Chairs and Blue Seaweed Cube, 1991-1994 Gaetano Pesce is no follower. So it can be difficult to assess his debts to other artists and designers, even those which might seem to be closest to him. A case in point is Arte Povera, Italy’s idiosyncratic variant of Conceptualism, which accounted for the country’s most inventive and energetic art in the 1960s. Pesce knew several figures associated with the movement, and has remained connected to Germano Celant, its critical spokesman. But except in the most general terms—a shared desire to infuse ideas with material intensity—it is difficult to situate him as a full participant. If there is one work by Pesce that connects to Arte Povera, however, it is the Rag Chair, created in 1972. A quintessential example of “poor” materials transformed, it consists of found textiles bunched up and embedded in latex. A comparison can be made to Michelangelo Pistoletto’s famous Venus of Rags (in which a cast of the Venus de Milo contemplates a heap of discarded garments), but the effect that Pesce achieves is far more primal. It is a monument dragged straight from the gutter. Two decades after the creation of this singular masterpiece, Pesce reprised the general idea, but in a new and lighter key. The result was his series of Seaweed Chairs. He was by now more oriented to serial production, and approached these works in a significantly more pragmatic way. They are hollow cast, and are made from shredded paper and resin. The basic idea, however, is retained. As if under the pressure of some invisible force, piles of detritus have been configured into functional form. Also like the earlier chair, though at finer scale, each bit of material operates like a brushstroke in the composition.
Gaetano Pesce Prototype for Seaweed Chair, 1991 Resin-impregnated shredded fabrics 31 x 41 x 31 inches 78.7 x 104.1 x 78.7 cm Edition of 6
Gaetano Pesce Seaweed Chair, 1991 Resin-impregnated shredded fabrics 32 x 45 x 31 inches 81.3 x 114.3 x 78.7 cm Edition of 6
Gaetano Pesce Blue Seaweed Cube, 1994 Polyurethane and cloth 20 x 20 x 20 inches 50.8 x 50.8 x 50.8 cm Edition of 2
Industrial Skin: Una Casa Per Me, 1991 One of the most potent instruments in Pesce’s expansive design toolkit is his draftsmanship. He can draw like a dream, when he wants to, and in many different styles. Until the 1970s, he executed his renderings in conventional media; but then, feeling that this aspect of his oeuvre could have the same material qualities as his finished objects, he began making what he calls “skins,” large sheets of latex with added resin, ink and paint. The size, flexibility, and translucency of these works lends them a mutable quality. One simultaneously looks at and through them, as if they were presented as subjective windows on the world. Often, these works feature figurative imagery, and as the use of the term “skin” suggests, they are part of Pesce’s longstanding project of literally embodying his ideas, with the variation and sensuality of humanity itself. They are also among his most personal works, often incorporating a quality of self-portraiture. In the case of this particular work, the image is that of “a house for myself”—which should be taken as a psychological and imaginative proposal, not a narrowly architectural one.
Gaetano Pesce Industrial Skin: Una Casa Per Me, 1991 Polyurethane 112 x 60 inches 284.5 x 152.4 cm
Tree Lamp, 1992 What is the essence of 20th century light? This is the question that Pesce set out to explore in the mid-1980s, when he created a series of lamps in urethane, often featuring networks of small bulbs. He has said that the light of the Renaissance was even, the illumination of emerging humanism, while the light of the Baroque is intense, theatrical (think of Caravaggio). The light of modern times, by contrast, is secular and technological. Instead of being bestowed by a painter into an image it is generated through design within a structure. The Tree Lamp swerves toward naturalistic imagery; it’s interesting to note that it was produced when Pesce was working on his famous Organic Building in Osaka, with its living wall of plants.
Gaetano Pesce Tree Lamp, 1992 Polychrome urethane, steel, and papier-mâchÊ 41 x 28 x 25 inches 104.1 x 71.1 x 63.5 cm
Installation view: Wendell Castle Remastered, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY, 2015-2016
Dome and Ghost Lamps, 1992-1994 These modestly scaled works show Pesce’s roving experimentalism at work. Exploiting the translucency of polyurethane resin, one of his signature materials, he has often used it in lighting applications. The related Dome and Ghost Lamps both operate according to this principle, having the appearance of glowing material conglomerates. Both series are constructed partly from shredded documents (perhaps a mordant allusion to bureaucracy, one of his bêtes noires). The Dome Lamps are a more conventional lighting form, while the upright configuration of the Ghost Lamps suggests a latent figuration, implicitly suggesting shrouded bodies.
Gaetano Pesce Dome Lamps, circa 1994 Recycled paper and polyurethane each: 14 x 27 inches 35.6 x 68.6 cm
Gaetano Pesce Ghost Lamps, 1995 Recycled paper and polyurethane each: 47 x 7 x 5.5 inches 119.4 x 17.8 x 14 cm Edition of 25
Gaetano Pesce Ghost Lamps, 1995 Recycled paper and polyurethane each: 47 x 7 x 5.5 inches 119.4 x 17.8 x 14 cm Edition of 25
MODELS
Gaetano Pesce Model for Bookshelf in Red, 1975 Polyurethane foam 16 x 29 x 5 inches 40.6 x 73.7 x 12.7 cm
Gaetano Pesce Model for Steps Polyurethane foam 24 x 26 x 3 inches 61 x 66 x 7.6 cm
GAETANO PESCE
Gaetano Pesce: produire industriellement la difference, UQAM, Centre de design, Montréal, Canada 1988
Modern Times Again, Steelcase Design Partnership, New York, NY
1986
Gaetano Pesce 1975-1985, Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, France Gaetano Pesce: Drawings, Models, Prototypes, Max Protetch Gallery, New York, NY
Present
Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY
1983
Gaetano Pesce, Yale School of Architecture Exhibition, New Haven, CT
1987
Professor at the Domus Academy, Milan, Italy
1975
Gaetano Pesce, Le futur est peut-être passé, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France
1939
Born in La Spezia, Italy Select Group Exhibitions
Select Solo Exhibitions
2019
Collection Highlights, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
2015
New Territories: Laboratories for Design, Craft and Art in Latin America, Museum of Arts and Design, New York,
2015
New Territories: Laboratories for Design, Craft and Art in Latin America, Museum of Arts and Design, New York,
2019
Gaetano Pesce: Age of Contaminations, Friedman Benda, New York, NY
2016
Gaetano Pesce: Molds (Gelati Misti), MOCA Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, CA
2015
Performance nell’installazione: La Cucina Luogo di Passione, Triennale Design Museum, Milan, Italy
Highlights from the Architecture + Design Collection, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
2014
Gaetano Pesce: Retrospective, Sotheby’s Gallery Charpentier, Paris, France
2014
NYC Makers: The MAD Biennial, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY
2007
Pink Pavilion di Gaetano Pesce, Triennale di Milano, Milan, Italy
2013
Pop Art Design, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
2005
Gaetano Pesce: Pushing the Limits, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
2008
Formless Furniture, Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria
Gaetano Pesce: Il rumore del tempo, Triennale di Milano, Milan, Italy
Dreamland: Architectural Experiments Since the 1970s, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
H2O, Gaetano Pesce, Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Spain
2007
Design contre Design: Deux siècles de creations, Galeries Nationales de Grand Palais, Paris, France
1998
The Presence of Objets: Gaetano Pesce, Montreal Museum of Decorative Arts, Montreal, Canada
Simply Red, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA
1997
Currents 69, Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO
2006
Architektur und Wohnen (Designer of the Year Exhibition), Cologne, Germany
Gaetano Pesce, Material Connection, New York, NY
Italy Made in Art Now, Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China
Gaetano Pesce, The Gallery Mourmans, Maastricht, Netherlands
2005
Italian Design on Tour (i.DoT), Bulthaup Center Design Gallery, St. Petersburg, Russia; Designmai Forum Edison
NY
1996
Gaetano Pesce: Le temps des questions, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
Höfe Decoratives, Berlin, Germany; Science and Technology Museum, Shanghai, China; Xing Fu Cun Art
1992
Gaetano Pesce, cinq techniques pour le verre, experience au CIRVA, Musée de Marseille/Réunion des musées
Center, Beijing, China
nationaux, France
Recent Sessions in Modern and Contemporary Design, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, TX
Gaetano Pesce, collaborative exhibition with Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel, and Peter Joseph Gallery, New York,
XXXL: Monumental Work by Gaetano Pesce for Fish Design. Moss Gallery, New York, NY
NY
Pushing the Limits, Philadelphia Museum of Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Gaetano Pesce: Steelcase design partnership, Max Protech Gallery, New York, NY
Il Rumore del Tempo, Triennale di Milano, Milan, Italy
1991
1989
2004
Italian Design on Tour (i.DoT), Chelsea Art Museum, New York, NY; NeoCon Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL;
Onze Lieve Vrouw van Bijstand, Kortrijk, Belgium; Forment de les Arts Decoratives, Barcelona, Spain
Select Awards
US Design: 1975-2000, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN
2010
IIC Lifetime Achievement Award, Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
2003
Global Village—The 60s, Musée des Beaux-arts de Montréal, Montreal, Canada
2009
Lawrence J. Israel Prize, Interior Design Department of the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY
100 Years, 100 Chairs, Museum voor oude en Moderne Kunst, Enschede, Netherlands
2006
Designer of the Year, Architektur und Wohnens, Cologne, Germany
Melting Pop, Cento d’arte contemporanea, Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena, Italy
2005
Collab’s Design Excellence Award, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
National Design Triennial, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York, NY
2004
Good Design Award, Chicago, IL
US Design: 1975-2000, Bass Museum of Art, Miami, FL; American Craft Museum, New York, NY
1981
Member of the jury for the 1st Biennale of Architecture, Sofia, Bulgaria
2002
Trans-Positions, Centre d’Art Passerelle, Brest, France; Wolfsonian Museum for Industrial Design, Miami, FL;
1973
Special Prize: Genesi?, prototype, lighting object sent to the fourth International lighting design competition
Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Louvre, Paris, France
organized by Yamagiwa, Tokyo, Japan
Mod to Memphis: Design in Colour 1960s-80s, Powerhouse Pub, Sydney, Australia
1968
Honorable Mention for Irreversione, Film presented at the Locarno Film Festival
1996
Designed for Delight, Alternative aspects of twentieth-century decorative arts, Canadian Museum of Civilization, Hull, Quebec, Canada; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH; Montreal Museum of Decorative
Select Museum and Public Collections
Arts, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, France Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie, Krakow, Poland; Die Neue Sammlung, Munich, Germany; J.B. Speed Art
Centre de Création Industrielle, Paris, France
Museum, Louisville, KN; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA
Centre National d’Art et de Culture, Paris, France
1995
Mutant Materials in Contemporary Design, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
1991
Masterworks, Peter Joseph Gallery, New York, NY
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
199
The Pluralist Tower, Museum of Modern Art, São Paolo, Brazil
Museum of Modern Art, Turin, Italy
1985
La chaise: un objet de design ou d’architecture?, Centre de design UQUAM, Montreal, Canada
Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Montreal, Canada
1981
Furniture by Architects: Contemporary Chairs, Tables and Lamps, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, France
Cambridge, MA
Musée Keski Suomen, Helsinki, Finland
1979
Transformations in Modern Architecture, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
1978
A Project for Tehran, Architectural Association, Art Net Gallery, London, UK
1975
The Future Is Perhaps Past, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France
1972
The New Domestic Landscape: Achievements and Problems of Italian Design, The Museum of Modern Art,
New York, NY
1970
Nouveaux Espaces, Louvre, Paris, France
1962
Biennale Triventa d’Arte, Sala della Ragione, Padua, Italy
G A E TA N O P E S C E A G E O F C O N TA M I N AT I O N S Design: Olivia Swider Texts: Glenn Adamson Photography: Timothy Doyon, Daniel Kukla, and Adam Reich Cover image: Gaetano Pesce, Moloch Lamp’s photoshoot, Milano 1972; Image courtesy of Archivio Cichero Illustration image: Photography by Antoine Bootz; Image courtesy of Galerie Magazine
Published by: Friedman Benda 515 West 26th Street New York, NY 10001 Tel. + 1 212 239 8700 www.friedmanbenda.com
A very special thank you to Gaetano Pesce, Alisa Maria Wronski, Giulia Tosciri, and the entire Pesce studio.
Content copyright of Friedman Benda and the estate of the artist. Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Age of Contaminations, October 24 - December 14, 2019.