After taking over at Bottega Veneta earlier this year, Matthieu Blazy commissioned architect, artist, and designer Gaetano Pesce to create a site-specific artwork for the brand’s SS/23 show in Milan. The vast set was filled with 400 vividly coloured chairs, set on top of a resin floor, designed by Pesce. The show was a success and Blazy’s tenure at Bottega Veneta had begun.
The connection between Pesce and the Italian fashion house is set to continue at Design Miami, with an exhibition at the flagship fair. The exhibition will see a selection of the Come Stai? Chairs are displayed and available for purchase at the event, as well as online.
For Pesce, the chairs are a new design and the first original chair in many years. The chairs are crafted from cotton canvas that is based on traditional toile fabric and has been dipped into a coloured resin. Some of the chairs were finished off with hand drawings. Each of these chairs is unique, and to launch the chairs to a retail market, the artist and the brand have enlisted Kate Moss, who poses nude on one of the chairs featuring the brand’s logo.
“This chair is a tribute to diversity,” Pesce said in the press release, “it is about the human being, we are all different. We are all different and this is our defining quality – otherwise, we are just a copy. We are all originals, and this is one of the themes.”
The chairs will be accompanied by a new book – commissioned by Blazy and Bottega Veneta and features insightful conversations between Pesce and Hans Ulrich Obrist. The publication will be a limited edition, and will explore “the ideation, approach, and process of the collaboration, uncovering the many connections between Pesce and Blazy’s creative practices and values.”
The book also contains contributions from Blazy and Maria Cristina Didero, which documents the origins of the project. The book also contains illustrations lensed by Stephan Shore and Sander Muylaert that show the development stages of the chairs. The publication follows the Come Stai? Design with an atypical profile informed by the chair. The cover is inspired by the materials used to create the chairs, and each limited edition will feature a unique cover.
The launch will coincide with a book signing in Miami on November 30, which will be followed by an artist conversation between Pesce and Design Miami’s curatorial director Maria Cristina Didero.
