Armchair 1968

Editor: Domenico Gnoli’s “Armchair,” created in 1968 using mixed media and textile, features an overwhelming field of yellow and a floral pattern. There's something a bit unsettling in the work...like the banality is meant to point to something more, I guess. What do you see in this piece? Curator: Unsettling, yes! That's a brilliant observation, it really sings to the Pop Art elements Gnoli brings to his work. Forget the vast landscapes and epic narratives. Here, Gnoli's zooming in on the mundane, finding a sort of ironic grandeur in the everyday. Like peering too closely at something perfectly ordinary until it blooms with unexpected strangeness, right? Do you find that the pattern contributes to that? Editor: Absolutely! The relentless repetition definitely contributes to that feeling of…strangeness. I mean, it’s just a floral armchair. It’s so…normal! But the obsessive focus is just so odd. I'm wondering though: What is it about? Curator: Perhaps it's a comment on consumer culture, on the overwhelming sameness that can creep into our lives and how patterns influence our view of culture and history, or on how our lives start resembling interior design and commercial patterns in general. You know, when you stop to really think about the chair you're sitting in and what kind of flowers are printed on it, perhaps this chair really is about nothing, because these objects do not really hold cultural values except for their mass aesthetic and accessibility, which makes it fascinating, don't you think? Editor: That’s such an interesting idea… It almost turns something really uninteresting into a real work of art by focusing intensely on it. Thank you. Curator: My pleasure! It reminds me to keep my own sense of home under creative, critical eyes, or I will get trapped in my own floral textile prison!