Martino Gamper's 100 chairs: more art installation than design exhibition

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This was published 8 years ago

Martino Gamper's 100 chairs: more art installation than design exhibition

An audacious design challenge continues to give new life to old chairs.

By Ray Edgar

In 2007, Martino Gamper set himself a challenge: design one chair per day for 100 days. Material choices were key to the project. He would use old, discarded and damaged chairs found on the street, gleaned from op shops, or donated by friends.

From his former teacher, designer Ron Arad, Gamper received five worn Arne Jacobsen Butterfly chairs. Deconstructing Jacobsen's chair, Gamper sawed its sinuous lines in half and rebuilt it almost as a black block. Other chairs playfully combined an inflatable toy, bike handles, plastic garden chairs and bentwood.

Martino Gamper describes his 100 chairs as "very human".

Martino Gamper describes his 100 chairs as "very human".Credit: Lionel Catelan

Displayed in a West London terrace house, the effect of these one-off, inverted, grafted hybrids was more art installation than design exhibition. One collector bought the entire series on Gamper's stipulation that it not be broken up.

"It was the only way to put myself on the map," says the Italian born, London-based designer. The audacious move worked. Since then he has received numerous commissions, designed furniture for Magis and, in perhaps the most effective marriage of his methodology to the mainstream, produced Moroso's Metamorfosi collection. In this 60th anniversary series Gamper reinterprets the organic forms and profiles of furniture by Moroso stablemates Ron Arad and Patricia Urquiola​ and upholsters them in electric hues.

Diverse: "They're short, they're fat, they're long, they're gorgeous."

Diverse: "They're short, they're fat, they're long, they're gorgeous." Credit: Angus Mill

In the decade since the 100 Chair series was first exhibited, it's toured in Germany, Tokyo, San Francisco and this month opens in Melbourne. In each city he has designed a new 100th chair. Like the other 99, it's essentially found and responds to its place of birth, revealing something of the new stimuli and adding a new story to the collection.

The chairs are presented as if they are people chatting together in groups.

The chairs are presented as if they are people chatting together in groups.Credit: Angus Mill

Explaining the series' longevity and popularity, the designer declares, "It goes against the grain of the chairs we see in shops and fairs. It's totally non-commercial. It catches people's imagination. It makes them think about what we throw away. How little it needs sometimes to transform an object into something desirable: from waste to taste.

"They're hilarious, ironic, they're strange, they're ugly. They are very human in a sense. It's like having 100 people in a room," he says laughing. "They're short, they're fat, they're long, they're gorgeous."

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Indeed that's how he plans to display the chairs at Design Hub; not as precious objects on pedestals, but as if they were "people chatting together in groups".

Gamper appreciates the irony that work that to a large extent criticises the fetishisation of design and consumerism is coveted immediately. His work hovers amid the fine line between conceptual art's controlling principle and design's imposed brief. "Art gives freshness and freedom to be myself," he says. "I'm trying to keep that artistic licence."

Today his approach to re-use is known as "mash ups", "hacking" or "upcycling" (a term he finds ugly). But in the 20th century alone Dutch designers such as Gerrit Rietveld transformed a crate into a chair while his compatriot Tejo Remy strapped together found drawers to make a celebrated chest for Droog. Meanwhile Italian legends like Achille Castiglioni employed tractor seats and bicycle saddles in his humorous furniture designs.

"For a long time I felt the weight of Italian design history," he says. "I'm using [history] as a building material. It connects them a lot easier to the future."

Gamper sees his work as part of a continuum. "We need to inspire each other rather than fight about who copied who. It can be taken on and made into something more interesting. You can also improve an idea."

As part of the Design Hub exhibition, Gamper will run a three-day workshop with invited local designers. The work will use found materials similarly inspired by location and stories. Called Postforma, it will run alongside the 100 chairs exhibition.

For Design Hub curator Fleur Watson, Gamper's work "says very clearly that design is about thinking – being inventive and responding to the different materials and textures and aspects that are around us. And how might we create poetic and meaningful objects, often out of not much at all."

Martino Gamper, 100 Chairs in 100 Days, RMIT Design Hub, February 26-April 9 (part of the Melbourne Fashion Festival cultural program)

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