Cadre, on exhibit at Art Plural Gallery in Armenian Street (PHOTO SIR MICHAEL CULME-SEYMOUR)
From the outside, it looks like Art Plural Gallery in Armenian Street has transformed its ground floor into a furniture showroom. But step inside and it is an altogether different story, as these static objects seemingly come to life.
The chairs' impossibly high backrests seem to flutter, the ends of a bench twist and turn like tangled noodles, tendrils emerge from wooden frames, a chair appears to have collapsed while another's seat explodes in a fibrous mess on the ground.In this mischievous, playful world of artist-designer Pablo Reinoso, you're forgiven for asking: Is it art? Or is it for my dining room?
In today's age of trendy crossovers between the worlds of art and design, the respected Argentina-born Frenchman's works would seem a perfect fit. Except that 57-year-old Reinoso doesn't think much about the idea of designers doing art.
Argentina-born Frenchman Pablo Reinoso
"There have been many who make this mistake. One hundred per cent of designers who were nowhere near the arts before... and suddenly they see this territory where they can be free from their customer, the consumer, the marketing people - an open space where they're told: 'You can be an artist.' And then they do s**t!" he laughed. "It's not only about: 'I put up a chair, put something inside it and play with it.' It's something more than that. It's about presenting your own language."
One of Reinoso’s many benches — Spaghetti Bale
While many of the 15 works in his first solo show in the region have a functional value (including a model prototype of a bench that loops over itself in the shape of the infinity symbol, for which there are already talks about commissioning this artwork), he insists that the initial impact of these objects should be on an artistic level.
