Gabi Faeh – Ausstellungen und Events

Nuove Forme e Colori del Vuoto.
Progetti e oggetti per Edition Gabi Faeh.
Spazio Arena Listone Giordano Milano, 2019.

New Shapes and Colours of the Void, or the flower vases by Stefano Casciani and Gabi Faeh shown at the Arena space in Milan AD 2019.

A flower vase doesn't worry about tomorrow.
Essay by Massimo Minini, gallerist and artwriter.

One day, after years of exercises in writing, and critics, and as a design and architecture historian, Stefano Casciani decided to leap to the opposite sides of the barricade. From judge to defendant, from attorney to offender – awaiting trial, of course; therefore innocent until proven guilty.

In the beginning was the Word, say the Scriptures. And it couldn’t be otherwise. Would the Word admit that someone else’s could have this birthright? Indeed, Casciani seems to believe, yes, someone else could.

In the beginning was the Drawing, both in prehistory, history and today. Just picture this scene. When humans started their pursuit of knowledge, the first form of communication must have been a sign, a mark on the sand or a scratch on a rock. Today, we can count almost 40.000 excellent marks, signs. It took millennia to get to this point. Then, everything advanced at great speed: the alphabet, numbers, grammar, tales, myths first, literature second, and on and on.

Nevertheless, it remains the birthright of the drawing, even as an alternative form of communication.

Who hasn’t scribbled some sketches on a napkin while sitting in a restaurant during lunch break, to explain his projects to a friend? Casciani must have done just that when, many years ago, at lunch in Cabo de Gata in Andalusia with Gabi Faeh – an architect too, first his partner then friend and partner in crime – had this illumination of resting from words and going back again to drawing. “Enough talking and writing about other people. I want other people to write about me now. Architect? Yes, Architect! I’ll show you! I’ll create – we’ll create with Gabi – timeless objects which will last so long, in shapes and colours, more, much more than a house. But they’ll be simple, like flower vases…”

Of course, after more than ten years at Domus’ helm, magazines have remained his incurable vice, so he changed his mind once more. Casciani founded Disegno, a refined, random-frequency magazine about industrial culture. Then he changed his mind again, words again, but he couldn’t just help but desiring to do more. Then in the meantime, what could he do between Domus – first as a youngster, then as a grown man – and Disegno? Something simple. A basic drawing. Let’s do some flower vases, again. With Gabi. With more materials. And her designer/producer’s skills. With the poetry of matter. Then, other vases. Just like in prehistoric times, in Greece, or everywhere in the ancient world. But these are plain, essential, cultured vases. Two lines, sometimes just one, a perfect circle, and there you have it!

Whether made of glass, metal, ceramic, coloured or gold, Stefano’s and Gabi’s vases are a small system held by two straight lines and a circle. The two dimensions of a pencil mark on a napkin are only a short step away from physical evidence. The two straight lines announce a truncated cone vase, sometimes doubled, upside down, two vases in one, two birds with one stone… Some of these vases have a sphere on top – like a chateau d'eau – or at the bottom, in which case you wonder how they stand straight. It is the same vase, but the sphere is probably truncated at the top/bottom. Columbus egg…

The decoration is made only by the simplicity of these – very few in truth – shapes and their minimal variants, like a Gregorian chant, in which the antiphon varies the composition imperceptibly yet inexorably. Or, to put it differently, like with Terry Riley, Steve Reich, La Monte Young or Philip Glass music. All of them were influenced by Ravi Shankar. All of them were Americans who discovered the beauty of immobility in India.

Gabi Faeh organizes, redraws, produces, makes sure that glass and ceramic artisans in Switzerland do an exact, excellent job, in order, clean, without frills, embellishments, decorations. She dares to disassemble and reassemble objects, she creates a round plate with a round volume on top, a cone, a sphere and a conesphere, like a cake, like a candid Sicilian marzipan cassata that can be eaten even in a hundred years.

And in pictures? New Shapes and Colours – post Ballo photographs – Ikebana compositions. A contemporary Morandi, without sisters, with more enemies than friends. Stefano and Gabi try and retry to simplify shapes by connecting matter between Munari, Man Ray and Fontana Arte or Venini glass art, reaching the most difficult peak, which, like life, is a spiral vase, which goes up, down, and then up again.

Stefano and Gabi’s vases seem now to be looking at us leeringly from the surface on which Susana Bruell, Katharina Lütscher and Mario Ermoli, placed them for the photo shoot, under Gabi’s influence and art direction. These objects don’t cry, they make no noise whatsoever. They move themselves at night when nobody can see or hear them. Then, the next day, they are ready, all washed, groomed and dressed, with a small boutonniere. Casciani drops by to take a look. He’s still a bit sleepy, but he says everything looks fine. Slate! Let the photo shoot begin! But… wait a minute! That small purple vase back there didn’t wash its ears properly. I’m sorry, but we’ll have to take that one again. It has to be perfect. We’re in Switzerland after all…