Galleria Franco Noero

VIA MOTTALCIATA 10/B
10154, TORINO
ITALY

Martino Gamper
Condominium

22 September — 25 October 2011

Galleria Franco Noero is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of the designer Martino Gamper in Torino. Condominium is a unique project expressly conceived for the galleryʼs peculiar spaces and underlines its commitment towards contemporary creative research, overcoming the boundaries between different artistic disciplines.


Martino Gamper's path is constantly marked by a great spontaneity that permeates all of his projects. These are rooted in a refined and precise knowledge of materials, processes, shapes and aesthetics that characterize the history of Italian design. After the first apprenticeship at a furniture maker in Merano, his native border town, followed then by studies in sculpture with Michelangelo Pistoletto at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wien, Martino Gamper finally entered the design world under the guidance of one of Memphis groupʼs founders, Matteo Thun. In 1997 he moved to London where he joined the Royal College of Art studying with Ron Arad, and there he later taught from 2004 to 2010.


Gamper tackles the unusual building approaching it in a unique and personal way, conceiving the rooms at the various levels as individual homes owned by as many occupants, a real "condominium", in which the objects are displayed in the spaces as they were portions of houses, in order to create a total living space. The designer moved to Torino for a month to work on found pieces of furniture (cupboards, tables, nightables, chairs, lamps) which make reference to the middle class style interiors from the Fifties to the Seventies. Gamper builds unique pieces by hybridating the found pieces of furniture, cutting and assembling their parts in new forms, repositioning part of their creative and material history in a project fully orchestrated by him.


Martino Gamperʼs creative process is summarised in the words by Emily King (2009): ʻMartino Gamper makes funny shaped furniture. Amalgams of odd angles, strange protuberances, unlikely surfaces and idiosyncratic features, his pieces perch uncertainly, as if waiting politely for an introduction to life on earthʼ.

 

Martino Gamper (Merano, 1971). Lives and works in London. Among his exhibitions and projects for public and private Institutions: ʻGesamtkunsthandwerk. Karl Fritsch, Martino Gamper and Francis Upritchard ʻ, Govett- Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth – New Zealand (2011), project for Café Charlottenborg, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2011), ʻStanze e camere + 100 chairs in 100 days. Martino Gamprerʼ, Triennale Design Museum, Milan (2009), ʻWouldn't it be nice...Wishful thinking in Art & Designʼ, Centre dʼArt Contemporain, Genève (2007), ʻUndiszipliniert/ Undisciplined: Phenomenon of Space in Art, Architecture and Designʼ, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Wien (2008), ʻ100 chairs in 100 Daysʼ, 5 Cromwell Place, London (2007), ʻConfronting the chair – Martino Gamperʼ, Design Museum, London (2006/2007). Among the projects for private clients and companies, the chairs ʻVignaʼ for Magis.

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