Throughout the 1980s Barbara Kasten’s work, with its bold colors, neoclassical flourishes, and impossible geometries, sat at the forefront of postmodern aesthetics in art, design, and architecture. Today, younger artists and designers have begun to revisit this moment and draw inspiration from its formal vocabulary. This provides the unique opportunity to bring celebrated artists and designers Peter Shire and Martino Gamper together for an in-depth conversation that will take up questions of postmodern form and tactics, humor, function, the “as found,” and quotation.

Peter Shire, Ja Ja Brazil (2011)Martino Gamper, 100 Chairs in 100 Days (2007)

Martino Gamper (born 1971, Merano, Italy; lives London) started as an apprentice with a furniture maker and went on to study sculpture under Michelangelo Pistoletto at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Gamper has presented his works and projects internationally, at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London; Palais De Tokyo, Paris; The Modern Institute, Glasgow; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; and Centre dʼ Art Contemporain, Genève. Gamper was the recipient of the Moroso Award for Contemporary Art in 2011, and the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year Furniture Award in 2008 for his project 100 Chairs in 100 days.

Peter Shire (born 1947, Los Angeles; lives Los Angeles) is the only United States member of the Memphis Group of designers and worked on the Design Team for the XXIII Olympiad with the American Institute of Architects. His sculpture, furniture, and ceramics have been exhibited in the United States, Italy, France, Japan, and Poland. His work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Barbara Kasten: StagesKasten Considered: Materials and Margins, with Sarah Crowner, Christine Poggi, and Jenni SorkinKasten in Context: New Peers: Barbara Kasten in conversation with David Hartt, Takeshi Murata, and Sara VanDerBeek