In memory of a friend

Name: In memory of a friend
Start: 2021-09-24 00:00:00
End: 2022-01-09 00:00:00
Location: Villa Croce

Villa Croce

Genoa, Liguria, Italy

Curated by: Studio Gaetano Pesce, New York

The show

The Museum of Villa Croce proposes, with the great exhibition Gaetano Pesce. In memory of a friend, a tribute to the work and research of one of the masters of contemporary design and architecture, internationally celebrated. At the same time he wants to remember a friend and another great figure from the world of contemporary culture who recently passed away, Germano Celant, who remains a fundamental figure in the history of art.

Artist, architect, sculptor and designer, born in La Spezia but now permanently in New York, where he has lived since 1980, Pesce has always distinguished himself as an eccentric and eclectic author, expression of the most innovative and radical wing of Italian Design of the 1960s.

The main engine of the artist is the continuous experimentation that involves both the forms, with his objects, decidedly material, which take on bizarre and unpredictable aspects, and the materials, often soft, light and transformable to the touch, because they are alive and in motion, such as resins, polyurethane, elastome and silicone. The resulting works are unique pieces, with their own individuality that distinguishes them from each other because, according to Pesce, “Democracy must guarantee and protect diversity, not equality”. Variation and multidisciplinarity are the fundamental elements of his way of proceeding and of his making art, an art that wants to be "active" to bring a positive change in contemporary society. The exhibition intertwines historical and revisited works on the two floors of the villa, such as the iconic Up5 & 6 armchair that stands out in the space that welcomes visitors on the ground floor, with its anthropomorphic forms magnified by the goddess of fertility which, at the same time, denounce the condition of the woman, still a victim of violence today, or Moloch of 1972, a macro version of the famous L1 table lamp, born in 1937 thanks to the designer Jacob Jacobsen, with the most recent works such as the Pelli (Industrial Skin) in thin resin like a layer of skin, hanging from the ceiling of the large decorated room on the first floor, the Vases, which seem to melt like melted colored wax, the tables and chairs, some like the Pratt chair series started already in the 80s and the lamps, Pulcinella and the Woman applique in papier maché covered with polyurethane resin.