The exhibition reveals the different values of chair: an everyday object whose dual nature - artistic and functional - is often forgotten: at times the protagonist of situations of poetic emotion (an absence, a wait, a departure), at others of instrumental creativity (design).
The analysis of the general relationship between Art and Design focuses on and evolves around the central idea of “Chair”: an object with a precise and defined purpose, but also a sculpture with an infinite number of possible interpretations. Where the importance of the chair is constantly threatened by its negation: the fact that nobody is actually sitting on it. The absent figure is therefore the true subject of this exhibition where the works of contemporary artists have been gathered together, in a continuous visual dialog, together with designer chairs which inspired them, like Four Thousand Seven Hundred and Twenty Five by Simon Starling and the chair designed by Carlo Mollino in 1948. Next to great contemporary artists such as Marisa Merz, Cristoph Büchel, Vedovamazzei, Adolf Vallazza, Tony Oursler, Ghada Amer, Chen Zhen, Ernesto Neto and Marc André Robinson, there are leading names from the world of design such as Carlo Mollino, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Alessandro Mendini, Jasper Morrison, Gerrit T. Rietveld, August Thonet, Sori Yanagi, Verner Panteon, Gae Aulenti, Coop Himmelblau, Shiro Kuramata, Frank O. Gehry, the Campana brothers, Marcel Wanders, Olivier Mourgue, Gaetano Pesce, Martino Gamper and Armando Testa. Troughout 2010 Electa will publish the catalogs of all the exhibitions mounted at the Gallery of Modern Art in Turin.