gaetano pesce's monumental intervention covers entire facade of aspen art museum

My dear mountains by Gaetano Pesce

Multidisciplinary architect and designer Gaetano Pesce conceives sculptures and installations for the two-part exhibition My Dear Mountains at the ground floor gallery of Aspen Art Museum in Colorado, USA. Pesce’s recent show exhibits a maelstrom of furniture, drawings, and sculptures that identify his experimental style with his materials as well as his pursuit of technological and social innovation. For the first time, he also took on an outdoor intervention on the museum’s façade, dedicated to Aspen Art Museum.

The monumental site-specific and temporary public art portrays the title of his exhibition as boulder-shaped hills rise from the ground and gather in their green and blue shades. A triangular slice of orange material is positioned between the mountains to conform to its imagery as the sun, and at night, it emits a soft, warm light that marks the building’s landmark. Pesce’s guiding principle in his practice lies in the concept that modernism poses as a method to interpret the present rather than a transient adornment to one’s lifestyle, carving a path to a future where individuality is preserved and celebrated.

The way the artist combines art with design and architecture is underlined in the playful and fluid objects for the exhibition. As one lands their eyes upon his works, visitors can also witness the restraint against mass-industrial production and distribution of Pesce’s works as he prioritizes uniqueness in each piece he presents. It peeks through his interest in cultural values that cultivate diversity and plurality by showcasing personal distinctiveness rather than going with the flow of trends, demands, and the current climate. Organic qualities may appear in his works, the stand the artist has long taken.

all images courtesy of Aspen Art Museum | photo by Adrianna Glaviano

The concept of time’s liquidity

From the tile of the exhibition, an array of mountains-inspired sculptures carpet the gallery, but the first chapter of My Dear Mountains accumulates a selection of furniture, sculptures, drawings, and objects spanning over fifty years of production and experimentation in different techniques and mediums including a new series of Leaf Cabinets (2022) realized especially for the Aspen Art Museum.

Working primarily with polyurethane resin, Pesce’s designs touch on figuration and color, recreate the physical properties of his materials, and value the visuals of imperfect crevices, shapes, and flows of the objects. The artist plays with an unpredictability that can assume different densities and features, as seen in Tavolo Pezzi Feltro Table (2019) through which Pesce transfers the elasticity and softness of felt to a rigid, three-dimensional volume.

The work of the artist also seeks to form the liquidity of time, one where nature is defined by continuous change, curiosity, uncertainty, and innovation. Two-dimensional cast-resin reliefs that Pesce calls ‘industrial skins’ channel the artist’s interest in communicating political, social, and personal narratives, the ever-changing landscapes that reflect his original purpose on the flow of time. As Pesce breaks repetitive patterns, his objects, although cast from the same mold, embodies their own shades, volumes, and textures that they were given during their fabrication process, the creation of the unrepeatable designs Pesce has always practiced.

Gaetano Pesce, My Dear Mountains. Aspen Art Museum, 2022.

Gaetano Pesce with Designboom

When Gaetano Pesce spoke with Designboom in 2017, he told us that the origin of his interest in design commenced with him sharing a design concept with industrialist Cesare Cassina. Today, his career spans four decades of commissions in architecture, urban planning, interior, exhibition, and industrial design, conceiving public and private projects in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. My Dear Mountains introduces Aspen Art Museum’s second annual Aspen ArtWeek, a week of programming taking place between August 1st and 6th and culminating with the museum’s ArtCrush Gala to honor artist Gary Simmons.

ArtWeek also hosts special projects, conversations, and performances by artists Jeffrey Gibson, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Alex Gvojic, Precious Okoyomon, Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Standing on the Corner art ensemble, along with a series of private collection visits. My Dear Mountains by Gaetano Pesce is curated by Aspen Art Museum Curator-at-Large Stella Bottai and is supported by the Italian Council (9th Edition, 2020), a program of the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture to promote Italian contemporary art around the world.

Gaetano Pesce, My Dear Mountains. Aspen Art Museum, 2022.