Each year, Miami Art Week seems to start a little bit earlier, and 2016 was no exception. The Setai kicked off the festivities Sunday night with a celebration of the legendary architect and designer Gaetano Pesce, which attracted fellow creative luminaries architect Jean Nouvel and artist Chuck Close. Pesce installed one of his signature tree vases in the middle of the tranquil fountain in The Setai’s courtyard. Just as he did in his iconic 'Up Series' chairs, the 76-year-old designer referenced the female form. ‘The symbol of the vase is the stomach of the mother with a baby,’ explained Pesce.
Pesce continued his Miami Art Week at Design Miami, where New York gallery Salon 94 is presenting a solo exhibition — titled 'Gli Armadi Parlanti' ('The Speaking Cabinets') — of his work through 4 December. The gallery’s owner, Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, curated the booth. ‘It started by visiting Gaetano and seeing that he was incredibly active and making some of the best works that he has made, so it started with the tree vases, and then we worked backwards,’ said the gallerist.
Installation view of Pesce's work at the Salon 94 booth.
The tree vases, which were produced this year, were the newest works in the stand, which also showed off a number of Pesce’s vintage pieces. Everything about the presentation represented all the elements regularly found in Pesce’s work: joy, humour and colour. ‘We went through some of his classic cabinets and found the motif of the tree and nature repeated again and again,’ said Greenberg Rohatyn, who presented a 2007 tree cabinet that featured one of his first manipulations with paper mâché.
A number of the cabinets featured smiling faces, a nice respite from the current political climate in the US. ‘The cabinets, they talk, but they talk because their shape and their form is a form to express things,’ explained Pesce.
Left, ‘Toscana Vase’, 2015. Right, detail of ‘Tree Vase XXL’, 2016.
Elsewhere in Miami, Pesce’s Tree Vase XXL – the centrepiece of his latest sculptural series – was installed in The Setai’s newly renovated courtyard.
INFORMATION
Gaetano Pesce’s sculptures are on view at the Salon 94 booth until 4 December. For more information, visit the gallery’s website
ADDRESS
Design Miami
Meridian Avenue & 19th Street
Miami Beach
-
Six brilliant bars for your 2025 celebrations, hot off the Wallpaper* travel deskWallpaper’s most-read bar reviews of the year can't be wrong: here’s inspiration for your festive and new year plans, from a swanky Las Vegas lounge to a minimalist London drinking den
-
Misfires and Monstrosities: three vehicular design disasters that show taste is in retreatFrom a multi-million dollar piece merchandise to a wretched Rolls-Royce, these are the low points of the year in transportation design
-
Thirty years after Dog Man Star, Brett Anderson looks back on Suede's album coversBrett Anderson talks cover art, photography and iconic imagery
-
What to look out for at Art Basel Miami Beach 2024Art Basel Miami Beach returns for its inaugural edition under new director Bridget Finn, running 6-8 December, with 286 international exhibitors and a packed week of parties, pop-up, and special projects
-
‘Gas Tank City’, a new monograph by Andrew Holmes, is a photorealist eye on the American West‘Gas Tank City’ chronicles the artist’s journey across truck-stop America, creating meticulous drawings of fleeting moments
-
Intimacy, violence and the uncanny: Joanna Piotrowska in PhiladelphiaArtist and photographer Joanna Piotrowska stages surreal scenes at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania
-
First look: Sphere’s new exterior artwork draws on a need for human connectionWallpaper* talks to Tom Hingston about his latest large-scale project – designing for the Exosphere
-
Marc Hom reframes traditional portraiture in Cooperstown, NY‘Marc Hom: Re-Framed’ has taken over the grounds of the Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, planting Samuel L Jackson, Gwyneth Paltrow and more ‘personalities of the world’ into the landscape
-
Alexander May, founder of LA studio Sized, on the joys of creative polymathyCreative director Alexander May tells us of the multidisciplinary approach that drives his LA studio Sized and its offspring, a 5,000 sq ft event space and an exhibition series
-
50 of America’s top creatives, photographed by Inez & VinoodhPhotographed exclusively for Wallpaper* by Inez & Vinoodh, we present a portfolio of 50 creatives driving the current discourse on American culture and its dynamic evolution
-
Nona Faustine confronts the past in New YorkArtist Nona Faustine reframes New York's colonial past in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum
