On Wednesday 22nd April 2009, on the occasion of the 48th edition of the Salone Internazionale del Mobile International Furniture Fair (Milan, 22nd – 27th April 2009), the Elica company, the Ermanno Casoli Foundation and Caterina Tognon Contemporary Art will present a new project by Gaetano Pesce entitled Pescecappa x Pescetrullo, curated by Marcello Smarrelli, artistic director of the Foundation, and held at the Elica Showroom in Milan’s Brera district.

The event will feature the presentation of Pescecappa, a prototype cooker hood created by architect and designer Gaetano Pesce and produced by Elica, world leader in the production of cooker hoods, for Pescetrullo, an unusual and innovative domestic dwelling planned by Pesce and commissioned by Caterina Tognon for the Apulian countryside of Southern Italy.

Well-known for his ability to work transversally in the fields of architecture, the visual arts and design, Gaetano Pesce, using the traditional stone chimney as a starting point – “a magical cap, alive with fragrant whimsy and a past that’s fresh with memories” – offers a new perspective on the domestic appliance that, suspended on the cusp of tradition and technological innovation, has, over the years, become the dominating figure in the contemporary kitchen, and an indispensable technological feature of our homes.

Pescecappa and Pescetrullo make Gaetano Pesce’s position clear in the debate regarding contemporary art and design, displaying a firm distancing from abstract and rational geometry, a desire to return to figuration and narration, involving not only design and architecture but also the parallel sector of the visual arts. Forms both ironic and sensual come to the fore: “I’m becoming more and more convinced that the figure, the recognisable image, is the form that best suits the objects of daily life we have around us.”

The artist, experimenting playfully with innovative materials, proposes a new image of the cooker hood, envisaging it as “something different to startle the kitchen space… a bright and unruly splash of colour… where just a look is enough to bring a smile to your lips!” In a moment of social and economic difficulty, where dreams are hard to cling to and imagination has to struggle, Pesce produces an interpretation of a commonly used, everyday, industrial object that freights it with new and unexpected significance, bringing a sense of freshness and lightness, conveying feelings of joy, warmth, irony and optimism.
A lifelong vegetarian, Gaetano Pesce highlights natural products such as vegetables, fruit and pulses in his Pescecappa: “the typical things that we use to prepare our food with”, simple flavours and odours with a rich history behind them, symbols of a healthy, environment-friendly philosophy of life. Even if technological advances help us to feel less and less dependent on the natural world for our daily needs, it is only right to remember that equilibrium with Nature forms the basis of the fundamental processes that maintain life, emphasising the respect with which the ecosystem must be treated.

The same philosophy informs the architecture of Pescetrullo, which replaces the traditional brick or stone wall with polyurethane foam spray-applied on wooden formworks. “A truly modern material,” says Gaetano Pesce, talking of his interest in applying this new approach. For the first time, polyurethane is used in architecture in the real sense of the word, not for a temporary pavilion but for a dwelling house, with all the related problems involving long-term running. The two small structures really look like out-of-scale design objects, “living boxes” that conform to Pesce’s desire to give them a subtly human semblance, transforming them into characters out of a story. At the centre of their poetic there is Man in all his quotidian reality, the narrative focus for architecture and design. The two buildings, located in the olive fields of Carovigno in Apulia’s Mediterranean-lapped deep south, assume the features of a man and a woman: houses that portray their owners, two large faces lambent with irony and expressiveness. The choice of colour is simple: blue for him, pink for her.

Preparatory studies, plans, prototypes, maquettes, and photographs for Pescecappa x Pescetrullo will be on display in the Elica Showroom.

Gaetano Pesce was born in 1939 in La Spezia, Italy. After attending the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Venice, he lived in various cities including London and Paris until finally settling down in 1980 in New York. In 1970, with Cesare Cassina and Francesco Binfare, he founded “Braccio di Ferro” (“Popeye”), for the production of experimental objects. Given his multifarious experience in a huge variety of fields, it is not easy to label his activity, which encompasses architecture, design, art and experimentation with the use of new materials. He moves deftly from one discipline to another, contaminating different languages, applying new and unusual methods, whether dealing with a building, a chair, or a jewel. He is a lecturer at the Institut d'Architecture et d'Etudes Urbaines in Strasbourg and at the Faculty of Art and Architecture at Cooper Union in New York. He has taught at Yale, at the Universities of Quebec and Montreal and at the Hong Kong and San Paolo Institutes of Architecture. His works are on show in permanent collections in the most important international museums of modern art, including the Musee d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Triennale in Milan, the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein in Germany, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and other museums in Finland, Portugal and Japan. His most significant architectural works include: Pescetrullo, commissioned by gallery owner Caterina Tognon as a summer residence in Apulia (2008); Pink Pavilion, built for the Triennale Bovisa in Milan (2007); the Organic Building in Osaka (1990); and the offices of the TWBA/Chiat/Day advertising agency in Manhattan (1994). A wide-ranging retrospective was dedicated to the artist’s 44-year career by the Triennale in Milan and the Vitra Design Museum: it ran from 2005 to 2006 and was entitled The Noise of Time.

Event details

Artist: Gaetano Pesce
Title: Pescecappa x Pescetrullo
Curated by: Marcello Smarrelli
Inauguration: Wednesday 22nd April 2009, 6pm – 9pm
at the Elica Showroom, Via Pontaccio 8, Milan (Brera district)
Running from: 23rd April – 30th May 2009
Opening hours during the Salone del Mobile Furniture Fair, 22nd – 27th April 2009: 10.00 am – 9.00 pm
Opening hours from 28th April to 31st May 2009: Monday – Friday, 1.00 pm – 7.00 pm, Saturday, 10.00 am – 8.00pm.
 

Info:
The Ermanno Casoli Foundation: Stefania Fois, tel. +39 0732610801, fax. +39 0732610740, segreteria@fondazionecasoli.org, www.fondazionecasoli.org
Caterina Tognon Contemporary Art – Venezia: tel. +39 041 5207859, info@caterinatognon.com
www.caterinatognon.com
Elica
www.elica.com

Press offices:
The Ermanno Casoli Foundation: Marta Colombo, tel. +39 340 3442805, ufficiostampa@fondazionecasoli.org
Ghenos – Press office and public relations for Elica: tel. +39 02 34530468, info@ghenos.net
Corporate Elica Press Office: Donatella Vici, tel. +39 0732 610315, ufficiostampa@elica.com