City Gallery

Past exhibition

Martino Gamper: 100 Chairs in 100 Days

8 April–13 August 2017

Martino Gamper says, ‘There is no perfect chair.’ Some ten years ago, the London-based, Italian-born furniture designer initiates his project, 100 Chairs in 100 Days. He makes a chair a day for a hundred days by collaging bits of old found chairs. By blending their stylistic and structural elements, he generates perverse, poetic, and humorous hybrids—each unique. Creative restrictions are key to the experiment—being limited to materials at hand and the time available. Gamper's ‘three-dimensional sketchbook’ brings him international recognition. It's exhibited in London in 2007, at the Milan Triennale in 2009, and at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2010. For our show, ninety-nine chairs are lent by Nina Yashar, of Nilufar Gallery, Milan. When Gamper visits New Zealand to install the show, he makes a hundredth chair, especially for our show—Kiwino.