Argentinian designer Andrés Reisinger took a spiritual approach when creating the furniture for his latest exhibition, “12 Chairs for Meditation.”
The show, exhibited at Nilufar’s Viale Lancetti Gallery during Milan Design Week, revolved around a vision experienced by the founder of Reisinger Studio during meditation.
This led him to design a series of 12 chairs featuring a variety of shapes and materials, arranged in a formation based on Orion, one of the most prominent celestial constellations.
These were displayed around a mosaic mural depicting 12 rings of apples that appeared to be floating in a cloud-filled blue sky, as meditative music composed by Reisinger played in the background.
The designer told Dezeen that the vision was born soon after he started taking meditation lessons from a professional tutor.
“I was already meditating before that, but she taught me how to meditate in a very specific way,” he said.
In Reisinger’s vision, he could be seen looking down on Nilufar’s exhibition space from the top corner. This is a perspective that no one has ever experienced in reality. He described the view as “very blurry, but I could understand what the situation was.”
After successfully pitching the idea to Nilufur founder Nina Yashar, Nilufur founder and curator of the show, the designers began producing the chairs one by one.
“We didn’t put everything together like a design project,” Reisinger said. “Sometimes there would be months in between. It was like a diary.”
“It wasn’t about making it all meaningful,” he continued. “It’s not like a game of chess, where you put pieces together.”
“We weren’t trying to make something visually pleasing. We were trying to make something that resonated and felt.”
The chair features both straight and curved geometric shapes. Some are very rudimentary, while others feature complex shapes. One design resembles a flower petal, another resembles a bird’s wing.
Most chairs feature white bouclé upholstery, but some are simply made from whitewashed wood. One of his most elaborate examples is decorated with beaded edges and a tassel skirt.
“Some pieces are more special than others, but each one has its own character,” Reisinger said.
Symbolism is an important theme throughout the show. The repeated use of the number 12, a powerful number in numerology since ancient times, is combined with the image of the apple representing the Garden of Eden.
“Apples are the fruit of desire,” said the designer.
“The symbolism goes beyond the fruit itself. There’s a reason it’s an apple and not a banana or a kiwi.”
Reisinger first created this “apple floating in the air” image as a digital artwork, then recreated it as a 6-by-6-meter mosaic mural using Venetian glass tiles.
Although the designer is best known as a digital artist, his work increasingly combines the digital and the physical. Most notably, his virtual Hortensia chair was brought to life by Dutch furniture brand Moooi.
“Reisinger’s work represents one of the most interesting interpretations of our time,” said Nina Yashar.
“Even within the physical limitations of this exhibition, Reisinger has created a vision of the elusive, transcendent, and fantastical nature of his digital works, which exist beyond the constraints of space and time as we know them. We have succeeded in evoking the essence of
The exhibition photographs are by Alejandro Ramírez Orozco. Studio photography by Marcello Maranzan.
Milan Design Week took place from April 15th to 21st, 2024. Check out the Dezeen Event Guide for the latest list of architecture and design events around the world.
