February 24, 2019Italian artist Mattia Biagi takes a seat on his One Wink for Yes bench at the opening of his Los Angeles exhibition “Metropolitan Sets” (photo by Linnea Stephan/BFA). Above: Biagi used construction-site materials as a counterpoint to the sophisticated furniture designs, like his A Little Bird Told Me desk and a mid-century Italian flower mirror from MA+39 (photo by Nicholas Reid).
As a child growing up in Italy, the artist-designer Mattia Biagi was enthralled when he saw the films of Federico Fellini on TV. “His sets transport you to a completely different planet, someplace I wanted to go,” he recalls. “Even though my mom and dad said that didn’t exist.”
No matter. In the past two decades, Biagi, who first gained fame for dipping household objects in black tar, has found novel ways to create new realities. Now, living in Los Angeles, he has built a starkly elegant world that nods to Fellini’s 1972 classic Roma with a distinctive Hollywood twist. In his imaginative exhibition “Metropolitan Sets,” which runs through February 26, Biagi transforms Badd House, the recently renovated event space created in the remains of the classic Oscar after-party haunt Spago, into a striking art installation. Conceived as an immersive showcase for his latest furniture collection — a line of minimalist case goods and lights with Surrealist collage embellishments — the show displays Biagi’s designs alongside classic vintage and cutting-edge 21st-century pieces offered by nine L.A.-based 1stdibs dealers.
Biagi’s versatile Magnoliid Clan doubles as a seat and a side table. Photo by Nicholas Reid
“1stdibs is the one place that I am always able to find interesting things from different cultures, different eras and different places around the world,” says Biagi. In the exhibition, he mixes Italian modernist designs by Ettore Sottsass, Fontana Arte and Stilnovo, all from MA+39, with recent Chinese sculptural pieces from Gallery All and Memphis-influenced artist-made American furniture from Another Human. “I don’t want this show to be a museum retrospective,” he explains, “so I combine contemporary work to be in conversation with postwar designs.”
Like all the pieces in Biagi’s latest collection, the Repeat After Me lamp, above, combines disparate collage elements, creating a Surrealist aesthetic. Photo courtesy of Mattia Biagi
Staged in darkness with spotlights on each exhibit, “Metropolitan Sets” is “a theatrical Surrealist fun house,” says Stefan Lawrence, owner of Twentieth and THE NEW gallery, which sell Biagi’s work. To the strains of an original soundtrack, viewers wade through a smoke-machine-created dreamscape in which towering collages of Italian statues printed on drywall serve to divide the spaces and pieces. “You are able to see how the collages were constructed,” he explains. “They look fake and very movie-magic, but behind them, you discover a new set piece with a Giò Ponti Superleggera chair or a William Haines lamp.”
The vignettes include a giant composition of metal poles in different lengths arranged at different angles, “creating a tree for five chandeliers from different eras,” Biagi says. “I have also built a scaffold, and on the shelves, there are different chairs mixed with a fragile vase or a stack of cement. And there are also two iconic Italian chairs on a seesaw in a pile of industrial materials.”
Building supplies provide a textural contrast to the finely crafted furnishings and also pay homage to the changing landscape of Los Angeles. “There is a construction site everywhere you go,” Biagi says, laughing. “For me, Home Depot is an art supply store.”
Biagi brings an elevated and worldly aesthetic to his curation of the show. “When he first told me about the concept,” says Bianca Chen, of JF Chen, “I thought, Whoa, this is going to be like nothing anyone has seen before.” Working with 1stdibs dealers, Biagi sourced premium American vintage designs by Edward Wormley from Gallery Marmet and added new California works from other sellers, including a petite glass and brass Milan table by Dragonette Private Label and Robert Kuo’s voluptuous lacquered Back Rest chair. A 2016 black steel-and-wood valet bench by the sculptor John-Paul Philippe, from Leclaireur, underscores Biagi’s art-as-furniture-and-furniture-as-art approach. The designer tapped JF Chen for French Deco, Victoriana and, in an nod to his Italian heritage, a Nobody’s Perfect chair by Gaetano Pesce and a seldom-seen prototype by Marco Zanuso. “Mr. Chen told me no one ever asks about this chair because it looks like junk,” Biagi says of the unrestored metal piece. “It is not luxurious, but it’s rich in value to me.”
Mattia Biagi
MA+39’s brass magnifying-lens coffee table joins a collection of chairs arranged on a scaffold and topped by Another Human’s velvet Stacks bench. Photo by Nicholas Reid
Biagi was raised with a strong appreciation for classicism and modernism. Born in 1974 in Ravenna, Italy, he lived in a home where a 19th-century painting sat above a 1960s console. “My father loved to combine stuff that is not supposed to be combined,” he says, describing a multi-era mix that is now a decorating precept. “I thought that was so weird, but so cool. Now, I couldn’t live in a house that is all modern or one that is all old.”
As a blond, tattooed Italian teenager, Biagi became a sought-after model for such fashion designers as Jean Paul Gaultier and Vivienne Westwood. “I remember going to warehouses where there was nothing, and on the day of the show, it was completely transformed into Versailles,” he recalls of his time on the runway. “This way of changing space made me interested in design.” A chance encounter in the Romeo Gigli showroom with Giulio Cappellini led to a 15-year gig at the famed Italian furniture manufacturer.
In 2004, Biagi relocated to Los Angeles, where he currently multitasks as an artist, furniture and interior designer and member of the creative team at the L.A. branch of Italian furniture firm Minotti. His 2006 “House of Tar” show at Twentieth — featuring tar-dipped chandeliers, musical instruments and teddy bears — was a breakthrough, positioning him in the deconstructed luxury realm typified by Maarten Baas’s Smoke collection for Moooi.
Biagi plays with light and shadow in a vignette that juxtaposes Robert Kuo’s brass Facet seat with an ornate shell chair and a stark modern design, both from JF Chen. Photo by Nicholas Reid
Biagi’s new furniture collection melds colorfully lacquered rectilinear forms with Dada-inspired collages that evoke Fornasetti and Salvador Dalí. In A Little Bird Told Me, a cutout wooden bird perches atop a lipstick-red Parsons-style writing table. A collage on wood of a woman from an Old Master painting with a Grecian urn on her head arises from the base of the piece. “Her eye is from an ad for a new makeup line, and her mouth is from a porno magazine,” Biagi says.
“Mattia is the epitome of blurring the line between art and design,” says Twentieth’s Lawrence. “His art is always about preservation and transformation. With this collection and ‘Metropolitan Sets,’ he’s preserving the memories and imagery in his subconscious and transforming them into furniture.”
It is not just an act of artistic autobiography, however. “This is a collage of my life,” says Biagi, “but everyone who sees the show will respond to it based on their own experiences, and hopefully something will stay with them. That’s why I made it cinematic. We all need a little Hollywood magic.”
