Artists Space

Superstudio:
Life Without Objects

November 20 – December 19, 2003

Superstudio: Life Without Objects is a retrospective exhibition organized in collaboration with the Pratt Manhattan Gallery and Storefront for Art and Architecture.

Collaged image of two naked figures crouching on the shore of a beach as the sun sets. One reaches out to grasp the other’s arm as they stare into each other’s eyes. Below them is a collaged image of a metal, machine-like contraption with looping wires sitting on the ground next to a craggy rock.
[Collaged image of two naked figures crouching on the shore of a beach as the sun sets. One reaches out to grasp the other’s arm as they stare into each other’s eyes. Below them is a collaged image of a metal, machine-like contraption with looping wires sitting on the ground next to a craggy rock.]

The exhibition examines the work of the Italian avant-garde design group Superstudio, which was founded in Florence in 1966 by Adolfo Natalini, Cristiano Toraldo di Francia, Roberto and Alessandro Magris, and Piero Frassinelli. Through their designs, Superstudio produced provocative and subversive visions of the future, which were critical to the transformation of architecture and design in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Superstudio’s work was characterized by scepticism toward the modernist ideal that enlightened architecture could change the world for the better. Instead Superstudio playfully envisaged a future in which people would live in neutral spaces devoid of the unnecessary objects that capitalism was foisting upon them. In addition to the visionary photocollages presented in exhibitions and books, Superstudio completed some real projects, notably a series of furniture manufactured by Zanotta and covered in a plastic laminate, replicating the monochrome grid developed in its architectural projects.

Curated with the collaboration of members of Superstudio, the exhibition will revisit their work and ideas through photomontages, films, story boards, sketches, and furniture drawn from the group’s archive and will explore their enduring influence on contemporary architects and designers.

Superstudio: Life Without Objects was initiated by the Design Museum London and is co-curated by William Menking and Peter Lang.

Chasin, Noah. "Superstudio: Life Without Objects." Time Out New York. December 18, 2003 - January 1, 2004. Print. 108.

K.R. "Delirious New York." New York Magazine. December 1, 2003. Print. 108.

    Collaged image featuring a vintage color photograph of the Golden Gate Bridge. A gigantic box whose sides are covered with images of forest treetops covers the center portion of the bridge. The bridge appears to pass through the box through a hole in its left side, out of which water pours into the Bay below. Verdant, rolling hills are visible in the image's foreground.
    [Collaged image featuring a vintage color photograph of the Golden Gate Bridge. A gigantic box whose sides are covered with images of forest treetops covers the center portion of the bridge. The bridge appears to pass through the box through a hole in its left side, out of which water pours into the Bay below. Verdant, rolling hills are visible in the image's foreground.]