Total Trattoria
Developing further his idea, Total Trattoria, which opened on 7 March 2008, completes the concept and puts it on show to the public for the first time.
Gamper has designed every single element of the dining event ranging from the kitchen and its storage areas to the cutlery and the tables and chairs to the glassware. A series of thirteen individual tables that connect to form one large dining table snakes around the gallery to seat 25 guests. The 25 chairs around the table are all different but are constructed from the same set of component parts, designed by Gamper.
The pieces include the results of many collaborations between Gamper and a wide variety of makers including engraved glasses placed on clusters of leather coasters, blown-glass water jugs and limited edition placemats designed by Gamper’s collaborators in the Trattoria events, Maki Suzuki, Alex Rich and Kajsa Stahl.
The exhibition graphics and communication, also designed by Suzuki, Rich and Stahl, includes a specially designed catalogue.’
Gamper, who recently received a Wallpaper* Design Award for the ‘Best Alchemist’, has just sold 100 chairs (from the project ‘100 chairs in 100 days’) to a Milanese gallery, and the Total Trattoria is an opportunity to see his new work in an unusual format.
Curator: Daniel Charny
Assistant Curator: Alison Norris
Graphic Design: Abake & Alex Rich
Gallery Director: Zeev Aram
Fresh Produce
Daniel Charny
A dining chair, a table and a fruit bowl are all known entities, but when they are on Martino Gamper’s chopping board they are transformed. While they become a fresh variation of their type they also take on a physical manifestation of his interest in a big idea: in which the whole becomes an unexpected result of the combination of its parts.
The Aram Gallery is pleased to present Martino Gamper in a solo show of new work, our first fully commissioned exhibition. The Total Trattoria has been developed to showcase the versatile and collaborative nature of Gamper’s work.
The Trattoria is an occasional series of dining and design events that a group including Gamper and Abake have run 22 times over 8 years. In all 22 previous Trattorias the main purpose of the event has been the bringing together of people to a dining experience supported by design. In each event some of the furniture, ad-hoc kitchen set-ups or serving accessories were specially designed, and it has been as much about the furniture being rustled up as the food.
In the Total Trattoria, for the first time all elements are custom designed. This is a celebration of the specially made. It has served as a springboard for generating and creating new pieces of design.
Gamper’s design process works with ingredients in a way that is reminiscent of cooking methods. He treats types of objects like traditional dishes, ones that have a solid principle but by challenging the established combination of ingredients, new recipes emerge and the results evolve.
This resourceful, experimental attitude has been consistently at the heart of Gamper’s work. The first piece I encountered, in 1998, was a credit card sized flat laminate widget, cut into a very specific shape. He called it a Sky Hook or sometimes a Taste Enhancer. It did neither of these mysterious functions in any obvious way – but it was a first signal of a search to embody social ideas through design. The next such combination was a ‘Corner Party’. During his studies Gamper camped out at various friends’ flats and found himself often contemplating the nature of corners. Organised in one the Milan furniture fairs, every element of the party from the corner street location to the furniture, the plates and the food was a version of a corner made from a different material.
Total Trattoria follows shortly after the success of 100 chairs in 100 days, another ambitious project, the 100 chairs in 100 days, in which parts of discarded and collected chairs found themselves adapted and mixed into a flurry of new chairs. The resourceful and charming combinations, made with a light touch are fast becoming Gamper’s signature.
Total Trattoria is an extension of this way of producing new pieces through a rich mix of planning and making. The exhibition includes a study of 25 variations on an idea for a new dining chair made of the same pieces but not necessarily combined in the same way, alongside many different objects that are variations on recognised themes. The thing that ties them together is that they are all expressions of the social nature of the dining event, each of the designs demonstrates the conviction that a social idea can be embodied in designed objects.
