Gaetano Pesce. One Chair, One Lamp, One Sofa

On June 20th inaugurates at One Piece Art Gallery of Roma, Via Margutta, the exhibit One Chair, One lamp, One Sofa, dynamic recognition on one of the greatest contemporary architects and designer, Gaetano Pesce. To the public will be presented the private collection of the gallerist made of a dozen pieces dating around 2000 among which stands out a specimen of the series Us and Them (2006), La Smorfia (The Sneer) (2005) and Tramonto a New York (Sunset in New York) (1980). The exhibition, achieved with the help of Takeawaygallery and opening on the occasion of the large retrospective at MAXXI – to whom the owner has supplied her second Sunset – must be read in first place as a personal homage to the artist, against a decennial cooperation and a constant commitment to the diffusion of his works via interior design and press, by Olimpia Orsini. It also represents a chance to analize Pesce’s modus operandi and his approach not much to the project or the matter, but to space and the inhabited ambient. A different cut, then, which focuses its investigation on the relationship of the designer/architect with his end-user, the volumes and individual creativity, chasing the concepts of fluidity and perennial becoming so dear to the Maestro of Italian experimentation.

Subjectivity, objectivity, singularity, unicity: to repeat trice the number One in the title of the exhibit means to insist both on the basic concept which moves the philosophy of the Ligurian architect and the thinking behind the planning of One Piece Art Gallery: the search for diversity, mistake, the vivid individual freedom hidden behind contemporary leveling and uniformity. Gaetano Pesce was among the first designers to introduce in industrial custom the rule of non-standard, similar but not equivalent, causing a revolution in the approach to mass-production and carrying out an act of generosity towards daily attempts of not-uniformity. Strictly bound to the concept of differentiation are other themes he has constantly asserted: the imperfection, the badly made, synesthesia as multisensory – individual, then – experience, the glitch. Emotion, flaw, freedom, subjective time, and in addition color, captivating figurativism, innovation of the substance, softness of the forms, irony, provocative and political messages, aesthetic satisfaction, feminine as forma mentis.

The exhibit is “a container of stories which want not to be narrated but seen; each individual can find his/her own. Where independence and suggestions replace certainty, so dear to society” (Olimpia Orsini); it becomes the place for the representation of subjective imagination and the reflection on a “radical” design committed to a liquid and nomadic visionarity. It aims to stage the inventing freedom encouraged by the works and thoughts of Gateano Pesce.

Text by Carlotta Monteverde