For what was meant to be his final project, Italian architect and designer Paolo Pallucco took the idea of a simple wooden chair, painted black, and spun it out into one hundred iterations, leading to the incredible series 100 Sedie in Una Notte. (According to Pallucco, he sketched them all in one night). Postmodern and exceedingly playful, these works are also poetic and philosophical, inspired as they are by lines from Rilke. Designs were then produced in limited editions of four and originally shown at the Mazzoli Gallery in Modena in 1990. Italian art critic Achille Bonito Oliva came up with the names, like Chair slid out of function all the way to the bottom for the one that calls to mind the curvature of a protractor and Chair injured by a shot from behind for the one whose arcing leg seems to have rotated out of the negative space in the chair’s back. Chair forcing the circle to reflect on the fate of life looks as if it’s bisected by a round plane while Chair mindful of the weight of life rests on legs that swoon. Paris gallery Ketabi Bourdet exhibited them this past week at the TEFAF Maastricht fair.
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