Swiss Institute Annual Design Series: Inaugural Edition, "Fin de Siècle"

Swiss Institute announces the inaugural edition of its Annual Design
Series, an exhibition curated by renowned Greek-Norwegian architect
Andreas Angelidakis entitled Fin de Siècle. A curatorial homage
to Eugène Ionesco’s 1952 absurdist play “The Chairs,” the exhibition
will include an eclectic array of late 20th century design pieces
sourced from museum and private collections. Presented in an immersive
mise-en-scène, this unique selection of chairs resonates with the drama
of Ionesco’s tragic farce, 20 years after the celebrated avant-garde
playwright’s passing.The exhibiton will include pieces by Martine Boileau, Mario Botta,
Andrea Branzi, Marcel Breuer, Nacho Carbonell, Oswald Dubach, H.R.
Giger, Pierre Jeanneret, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier), Reto
Kaufmann, Wilhelm Kienzle, Gian Franco Legler, Frédéric Levrat,
Alessandro Mendini, NN, Paolo Palucco, Charlotte Perriand, Gaetano
Pesce, Ugo La Pietra, Bruno Rey, Alfred Roth, Peter Shire, team form ag,
Kurt Thut, Peter Truog, Robert Venturi, Lawrence Weiner, and Armin
Wirth.

In “The Chairs,” an elderly couple recounts the demise of civilization
to a stage full of empty chairs. Absent of any sitters, the audience is
left to imagine the invisible figures that the increasingly incoherent
Old Man and Old Woman address. In Fin de Siècle, the chairs
themselves speak asynchronously, cast as characters and imbued with
life. Directed into small vignettes of imagined conversations and
actions that transcend periods and design movements, their dialogue
echoes the modernist promise fading away.

Curator Andreas Angelidakis writes: “In our current moment of plurality
and infinite flux, these objects from the past era of grand movements
are juxtaposed with one another. Let us contemplate their inaudible
conversations."

Highlights include seminal innovations in mass production by Marcel
Breuer, Le Corbusier, and Armin Wirth; experiments in utopian design by
Pierre Jeanneret; imaginative creations that extend reality by H.R.
Giger and Alessandro Mendini; and whimsical splashes of color by Robert
Venturi and Peter Shire.