Large Red Pebble Vase, 2016
Polyurethane resin, pigment
27 5/8 x 10 5/8 inches
Contributed by Salon 94 Design

It’s ridiculous, in a way, to put Gaetano Pesce and potted plants in the same sentence. He is arguably the most influential living designer, a geyser of ideas and provocations that has gushed unabated for over sixty years. Everyone working in speculative, figurative, experimental, conceptual, and process-based modes – which covers almost all of the interesting currents in contemporary design – owes something to him, whether they know it or not. But there’s another thing about Pesce. Nothing is trivial in his eyes, particularly when it comes to our built environment. And so: potted plants. They have been an important part of interior furnishings of the Noyes House since it was built, a way of bringing nature indoors, one of the central principles of the architecture. With this in mind, several of Pesce’s large-scale, poured resin vases have been set around the rooms (in addition to vases in several other scales, and a table-top shelf piece). They transform this modest dimension of the interior into something dramatic, a meeting of two forms of organic life – that of the plants themselves, and that of the intensely artificial objects, which are made of plastic but have the coursing, form-finding energy of vibrantly living things. Over eighty years old now, and given a seemingly supporting role in the installation, Pesce still manages to steal the show.

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