Shadow Armchair by Gaetano Pesce - Yellow

Name: Shadow Armchair by Gaetano Pesce - Yellow
Brand: Gaetano Pesce, Meritalia
Price: 6000 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Armchair padded with soft polyurethane foam, built without a mould to adapt to the body that sits on it. Being truly radical means rejecting any preconception, embracing recklessness and irony in the face of norms and tradition. The nature of radical design elects incoherence as process, reflected in the incoherent forms, in the unexpected inspiration, in the independence of volumes. The Shadow armchair embodies these principles; it emancipates itself from the need of a predefined structure, it grows in a radically unregulated way and changes in relation only to the body it mimics. The name, chosen by designer Gaetano Pesce for this creation for Meritalia, evokes both absence and presence: the absence of a body and presence of its memory, its imprint. The armchair is a single volume: the padding, clad in malleable materials, is happily unstable, fluid and magmatic. It thickens, but without ever really settling. Shadow is moldless. The result of a manufacturing process developed and perfected by Meritalia: the armchair is shaped with the injection of polyurethane foam, expanding and solidifying unpredictably. The making of the armchair - the craft, from cutting the upholstery fabric down to the finishings and details - is only complete when the armchair meets a body, whose heat and weight shape its final volume. Sitting on Shadow means letting yourself be enveloped by a shape and at the same time imprinting that of your own body - it is an armchair that has memory, capable of keeping track of the experience of using it. A physical Imprint that becomes a declaration of identity: furnishing a space with Shadow means appropriating it, projecting your own shadow and fixing it on an object that is both everyday and extraordinary.

Creator:

Gaetano Pesce (Author),Meritalia (Manufacturer)

Dimensions:

Height: 47.25 in (120 cm)Width: 45.67 in (116 cm)Depth: 43.31 in (110 cm)

Materials and Techniques:

Other

Place of Origin:

Italy

Period:

2000-2009

Date of Manufacture:

2007

Production Type:

New & Custom(Current Production)

Estimated Production Time:

12-13 weeks

Condition:

Seller Location:

La Morra, IT

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU9635238153412

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Gaetano Pesce

Gaetano Pesce is of a generation of Italian architects who in the early 1960s rebelled against the industrial perfection of modernism by conceiving new furniture and objects that were at once expressive and eccentric in form; or you might say they were more like art than functionalist design.

Born in the picturesque coastal Italian city of La Spezia in 1939, Pesce was a precocious talent who could have forged a career as an artist but opted instead to go to Venice to study architecture because, as he has said, it was “the most complex of all the arts.” Rather than having new worlds opened to him at design school, however, he found the rationalist curriculum oppressive in its insistence on standardization and prescribed materials and technologies.

Pesce wanted to explore the latest of both materials and technologies to create objects and buildings never before imagined, with what he called “personalities” that spoke to the issues of the day. He was keen to examine ways to diversify mass production so that each manufactured work could be distinct.

In 1964, Pesce met Cesare Cassina, of the forward-looking furniture company C&B Italia in Milan (now known as B&B Italia), for whom he would create many important designs, beginning with a collection of what he called “transformational furniture” — two chairs and a loveseat — made entirely out of high-density polyurethane foam. To make the pieces easy to ship and cost-efficient, he proposed that after being covered in a stretch jersey, they be put in a vacuum, then heat-sealed flat between vinyl sheets. Once the foam was removed from its packaging, the piece returned to its original shape — hence, the name Up for the series, which debuted in 1969.

In addition to these pieces, Pesce proposed for the collection something he referred to as an “anti-armchair,” which took the shape of a reclining fertility goddess, the iconic Donna. Producing its complex form turned out to be a technical challenge. Bayer, the foam’s manufacturer, deemed it impossible to accomplish. Pesce persisted and came up with a new procedure, demonstrating not only the designer’s key role in researching the nature and potential of new materials but also his vital importance in “doubting rules.” The Up chair and accompanying ottoman were born, and they were revolutionary in more ways than one.

In the early 1970s, Pesce began exploring one of his key concepts, the idea of the industrial originals. Employing a mold without air holes, and adding a blood-red dye to the polyurethane, he cast a bookcase that resembled a demolished wall, the rough edges of the shelves and posts resulting from fissures in the material made by trapped air. Through his research into polyurethane, Pesce figured out a way to make a loveseat and armchair using only a simple wood frame and strong canvas covering as a mold. Since the fabric developed random folds during the injection process, the pieces were similar but not identical. Cassina named the suite of furnishings Sit Down and introduced it in 1975. By experimenting with felt soaked in polyurethane and resin, Pesce conceived I Feltri, another collection of armchairs introduced by Cassina in 1987.

Pesce has gone on to live a life that defies expectation and convention and along the way has become one of the most seminal figures in art and design.

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