Gaetano Pesce, the story of a radical thinker
After Los Angeles in February, the Italian artist and designer (based in New York) will be the protagonist of a major retrospective in June at the Oscar Niemeyer Museum in Curitiba, Brazil. Gaetano Pesce talks about himself, between works of art and moments of real life.
Gaetano Pesce , radical thinker. Graduated in architecture in Venice , he has taught in Strasbourg , Pittsburgh , at theDomus Academy in Milan , in Hong Kong , in San Paolo , in New York . His works are part of the permanent collections of about thirty of the most famous museums in the world, from the MoMa to the Metropolitan , from the V&A to the Center Pompidou to Vitra . Pesce began experimenting with polyurethane, foam and resin soon after graduating, finding it absurd to work with materials that weren't strictly contemporary. And it is these materials, with their bold colours, their particular tactility, their ability to respond to light, their handcrafted finish, that catalyze attention and identify him in the collective imagination, even if in his very long career (he was born in La Spezia in 1939, and began exhibiting his work at the age of 18) has explored an infinite number of different avenues and mediums.
L'OFFICIEL: Do you like retrospectives? In this context, do you happen to rediscover characteristics of your work and works that you had "forgotten"?
GAETANO PESCE: I like retrospectives because they satisfy the desire to make what I do known. As far as my background and the work I've done, I try to avoid it. In Brooklyn , where we have the workshop, we also have a room dedicated to finished works, which are in order and well displayed for visitors: I've never set foot in that room, to prevent the past from interfering with my future.
LO: Why did you choose New York to live in 1980? What about Brooklyn? What does Brazil mean to you instead?
GP: New York , and Brooklyn in particular, is undoubtedly the city where the creativity of the inhabitants suggests ways of speaking, dressing, behaviors that belong to the sphere of reality. After a few years these ways discovered in New York are assimilated by other populations around the world and used as fashions, unfortunately even with a certain superficiality. To return to your question, New York is undoubtedly the place that best understands the values of the time, those that arrive, those that remain: my job is to observe them and possibly make them the subjects of my work. An example: the puppet supported by strings, the subject of one of my industrial skins (wall-mounted drawing made with a liquid material that solidifies in a very short time, ed.), says "it's just this ridiculous figure who still believes in equality". I am convinced that this conviction does not belong to those who know New York well. I don't live in Brooklyn, but for economic reasons my laboratory is located there, while my office is located in Manhattan, on Broadway, between Prince and Spring streets. My home, on the other hand, faces the East River, because I've always loved the mobility of water, its different shine, its richness of color: when you look at it, it reflects the sky. I know Brazil better than other countries because I have had the opportunity to visit it for many years, and I hope that De Gaulle's phrase during a speech to the Brasilia parliament, when he said that it is the country of the "future which will always remain the country of the future" , is in vain. Brazil seeks the future, succeeding or failing, with energy or without, with vitality or without, with creativity. It is this that attracts me, in addition to his kindness.
« Diversity helps us to communicate with those who have an opinion different from ours, equality obliges us to remain silent »
LO: Are you a visitor to exhibitions and museums? Who are the artists/architects/industrial designers who have impressed you the most?
GP: I'm not a visitor to museums or art galleries, I'm more interested in reality that doesn't tell lies. The artists and creators of the past interest me a lot for what they can still suggest from the point of view of correctness with respect to our time. I think above all of the artists who used different ways of expressing themselves such as poetry, music, science, sculpture, painting and architecture. They have always told me, with due diversity, that expression has no barriers, no contours, no limits. Today I ask myself: if Borges had written in Stockholm instead of Buenos Aires , would it have been different? In other words, does creativity have to do with where it takes shape? Must the language of an architect today take into account the language to be used where he builds, knowing that every place deserves a different story? Here we enter the great problem of diversity, and I would like to remind you that the pine family includes all different subjects. Even roses belong to diversity, and so I think people and places, and whoever professes and imposes that humans are all equal, does so for reasons of oppression and dictatorship, imposition and lack of freedom. Returning to the question, I think Frank O. Gehry is worth mentioning, as a sculptor by training who espoused architecture and made very interesting advances in it. For my part, I think that this extraordinary art must finally free itself from the now late and obsolete International Style, to embrace representations that allow anyone to understand through the figure. Architecture needs to be loved because it knows how to smile, it knows how to express moods, it knows how to make people happy and it needs to open its secrets to a world that understands figuration.
LO: From Pierre Cardin to Louis Vuitton , from Matthieu Blazy to Massimo Giorgetti , you are a source of inspiration (or a license of nobility) for fashion. What interests you in the relationship? And for example, which elements of Bottega Veneta did you take into consideration when designing the seating for the spring summer 2023 fashion show?
GP: It is my belief that museums no longer have the economic freedom to host new ideas. Even private art galleries have more or less the same problem. It seems to me that fashion houses look out to browse the world of profound creativity, for this they have all my respect. They can do what other cultural institutions cannot, and that's what happened with Bottega Veneta and dear creator Matthieu Blazy . With him I found respect for my ideas, which was mutual. I was able to express what I think is an extremely urgent political concept in the fashion world, a very powerful and effective disseminator of ideas. The theme I suggested, diversity, I think has been understood by the whole world. I was satisfied with it and I think my client and patron was too. In the future I think that what I have experienced with Bottega Veneta will be extended to other useful collaborations with other creators who I hope will be interesting and who avoid decoration, cosmetics and useless content, and who approach a reality in which I believe, i.e. that the art is an expression of time and a commentary on reality.
LO: How would you define your personal style?
GP: I define my personal style with something that is its opposite: incoherence. The values conveyed by time, in their existence make others decay, and in their going they introduce new ones which in turn make those that precede them obsolete. This alternation of the signs of the time does not allow us to be coherent. If we want to understand new contents and abandon past ones, we must assume inconsistency and above all else, be free from our own prejudices. In past centuries the slowness of time allowed the so-called creators to use a single language throughout their lives, through which they were recognizable. In our age, where values and things have speed as their characteristic, this century-long maintenance almost shatters into weeks, months or years. So the stability of our thinking in the past is today shattered by the contradictions tested by time. In other words, incoherence allows us to be rich in expression, profound connoisseurs of our age and free from ourselves.
LO: In choosing resin as a contemporary material, do you think you have explored all its possibilities?
GP: Resin is one of the materials I use, not only that, it is made up of a large family in terms of transparency, rigidity, elasticity, etc. Other materials that I use and that interest me are silicones, or foams, or elastomers, and I'm curious to know what will happen in the near future from the point of view of materials. I would like to remind you that the contemporary materials that the creators use bear witness to their time, and those who instead use traditional materials such as wood, metals, stones, etc. I don't think it can represent our age.
LO: There is a relationship between your Mamma chair (official name Up5, which in 2019, to celebrate its 50th anniversary, was placed, in a giant version and pierced by arrows, together with UP6, a spherical footrest with a rope attached, in Piazza del Duomo in Milan) and the Nanà by Niki de Saint Phalle?
GP: Niki de Saint Phalle was an excellent sculptor who used cheerfulness, lightness, joy, etc. With other works I also use the same characteristics. With the UP 5&6 called Woman , I actually expressed not cheerful values, arguing that man's prejudices and his words prevent women from being themselves. 53 years have passed since I made that object and unfortunately in many countries women are still victims of violence, of lack of participation in reality... My conviction, seeing the poverty of certain politicians in different countries of the world, it is that man, after the contributions he has made in history, is tired today. The woman, who until recently was bound by the private sphere, today opens up to the public aspect of things, with great advantage for the world. Let's not forget that symbolically the man's sign is a straight line, perhaps of coherence, while the woman's symbol is instead a broken line, which recalls her liquidity of behavior. Its being different according to the moments of the day, from mother to worker, from wife to lover... it resembles the liquidity of our time where values alternate, contradict each other, and appear and disappear like the waves of the sea.
LO: How have the collaboration with Cassina and B&B Italia influenced your work?
GP: When Cesare, owner of Cassina and co-owner of what is now called B&B Italia , was there, I was listened to by an entrepreneur with great foresight. Then and still today I argue that companies must also make trivial products to sell them, and to derive the economic advantage that allows them to exist. Part of the profits must be used for experimentation. As long as Cesare Cassina was alive, I had the opportunity to create the experimental company Bracciodiferro , and to create the first series of non-homogeneous products despite being in series, not identical but similar to each other, and with the B&B I was able to the UP 5&6 , the foot, and with Cassina the Sit Down series, the first product of a random series. The same industries today (especially Cassina) are concerned with investing in innovative products. I remember the Sunset sofa in New York, which tells the story of a possible decadence of a place and of the screens that help you fall asleep. My colleagues unfortunately don't push innovation and Italian design suffers. I have repeatedly denounced the decadence of Italian creativity in this field, and I have suggested that the Minister of Culture find urgent solutions, such as establishing that a percentage of companies' turnover be dedicated to financing experimentation
LO: The Organic Building in Osaka has been seen as one of the founding works of green architecture, the progenitor of the various vertical gardens. How would you reinvent the project today, what would you add to it?
GP: There is a project from many years ago, the Pluralistic Tower (1987), which envisaged a column of houses where each floor is designed by a different architect, (possibly the 40-50 best architects in the world) with their diversity which would represent the differences of those who inhabit their spaces. The project consisted in having a column of diversified houses, in the center a column of lifts and emergency stairs, and alongside these a column of private gardens on each floor. I haven't done this project yet, because it was probably too much ahead of its time. Interest in the Pluralist Tower has recently revived in a city in Brazil. It is a city governed by respect for ecology and sustainability where perhaps this work of mine will find its fulfilment, or perhaps not... but if it won't be in my case, it will be in the future because we must remember that today's Architecture , the International Style that we see present in every city without distinction or characterization of the place where it is located, is a symbol of totalitarianism, while the Pluralist Tower is an example of democracy in the most important and well-known art in the world.
« Humanity has one characteristic, the ability to think, but I don't see this immense gift very widespread »
LO: What do you think are your most interesting works?
GP: The Pluralist Tower , the UP 586 , the Chador lamp, the vases that represent the mother's womb.
LO: What is the question that you would like your works to raise in the public?
GP: I think the most important thing is the desire for knowledge, if my work aroused it it would be justified. Reflecting on the meaning of art is an urgent need to make our time understood. Art with fish in display cases in contemporary art museums leaves me extremely skeptical, and so do many examples of superficiality in art. Humanity has a very important characteristic, the ability to think, but I don't see this immense gift as widespread, and I'm sorry for the pessimistic judgment.
LO: Do you think that the concept of "time of diversity" (from the name of the MAXXI retrospective in Rome in 2014) is the most current key to understanding our present?
GP: I am convinced of that, not only of this historic moment, but also of those that will follow. The different has the best qualities of being unique. I remember that the time of copies is behind us, and the future is made of originality. In 1975, precisely with Cassina, for the first time I experimented with a mass production of armchairs and sofas, each one different and similar to the other, which was called Sit Down . Once again something doesn't happen, maybe because it's too far ahead of the times. Diversity should be a value understood by politicians, who instead delude themselves that they are making equal laws for everyone, while democracy is the respect and defense of the different, just the opposite of dictatorship. Diversity helps us communicate with those who have a different opinion than ours, equality forces us to remain silent. The worst thing that can happen to a society is the loss of the right to speak, to express one's convictions, because if this declines, the world loses value, and life too.
