26th international exhibition of chairs PROMOSEDIA, held in the Italian city of Udino from September 14 to 17

Passing the gallery

Materials prepared: Natalya Sedyakina

Magazine: N11 (67) 2002

From September 14 to 17, the 26th International Exhibition of Chairs PROMOSEDIA was held in the Italian city of Udino. Where, if not here, in a quiet provincial town, in the foothills of the Alps, where the air is divinely clean and the fiesta is the essence of daily ritual, and not a holiday myth, like most residents of big cities, to hold such an exhibition? The exhibition is literally buried in the countryside greenery, the pavilions are interconnected by glass transitions-galleries, and in the center of the exhibition complex an artificial waterfall created from a small river flows here ... naturally. In addition to the commercial part, the exhibition series of which almost without changes "flows" from year to year, PROMOSEDIA is famous for near-exhibition projects in which the chair becomes an object for philosophical reflection. This year the BestSeller and the Ideas for the Design of a European Chair (Ernesto Kayatstsa) became the two most interesting projects. The first took the eighth pavilion: here visitors could admire the "historical" chairs and chairs of 15 famous manufacturers. The release of these items as permanent hits continues to this day. Above each exhibit hung the author’s abstract of the designer who invented them or the life story of the designer, if his creation was given to outlive its creator. The exposition of the second project, Ideas for the Design of a European Chair, was fragmentary located in several pavilions and was devoted to the search for modern meanings and trends. It consisted of two parts: art objects created by university students, and experimental series of chairs made by pro designers. The art project of the students was particularly interesting: the chairs, created by man-made, exist in a single copy and are not actually designed to sit on them, but they do reflect the artistic idea, this or that creative image. The first prize of spectator sympathies was a chair-newspaper "Coffee Break", and the second - a ghost chair.