Condominium by MARTINO GAMPER
exhibiton views at Galleria Franco Noero, Turin (September – October, 2011)
Courtesy Martino Gamper, images courtesy of Galleria Franco Noero, Turin

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To prepare the show entitled Condominium at Galleria Franco Noero, Italian designer based in London MARTINO GAMPER lived in the gallery for six weeks, constructing site-specific furniture installations on each of the nine floors (including two basement levels) of the 1860 wedge-shaped building: Each floor takes on a different character of the various people that have lived there or that I met there. He started exploring the city and its objects and collected found objects and furniture from around Turin — items like cupboards, tables, night tables, chairs and lamps, mostly from the 1950s through ’70s — which he then dismantled and reassembled into new hybrids.

The first objects were created and installed to satisfy some of MARTINO‘s primary needs: two baskets, shelving and the structure of a wooden chair screwed to the wall (after two slanting cuts altered the leg section) to serve as a clothes rail—a rigid but also flexible support for bags and clothes hangers.

The result is a unique project expressly conceived for the galleryʼs peculiar spaces that built a relationship with Turin and its objects and MARTINO GAMPER‘s ability to mix and carve out domestic interiors, private life and different artistic disciplines.