What would happen if spaghetti were a bench? Here is a wonderful example
At the heart of each piece lies a bench, yet its essence is transformed through elongation and twisting, giving rise to an object that exudes a touch of anarchy and a profound sense of playfulness.
In the “Spaghetti Bench” series, Pablo Reinoso experiments with the concept of seating and its boundaries. He creates benches with elongated and undulating metal elements, resembling spaghetti strands.
These whimsical and playful benches seem to defy gravity and challenge the conventional idea of seating, blurring the lines between sculpture and functional furniture. Reinoso’s exploration of form and material in this series sparks curiosity and invites viewers to question the traditional notions of furniture design.
For his Spaghetti Bench artworks, Reinoso used public benches, which are anonymously designed and travel across cultures with an out-of-time, old-fashioned quality, as a starting point for his reflections.
Starting in 2006, these new creations have multiplied and found homes in very diverse places.
According to the artist’s statement on his website, Reinoso orchestrates a captivating transformation with his benches. After having served their conventional purpose as furniture, they are reborn as dynamic branches capable of growth and ascent. These once-stationary objects now take on a new life, expressing themselves freely by interacting with architecture, roaming through different spaces, exploring gaps, and following their own whims.
The metamorphosis of the Spaghetti Bench series represents a fascinating journey where function transcends into poetic and imaginative forms, allowing them to embody a sense of liberation and unbounded exploration.
About the artist, Pablo Reinoso
Pablo Reinoso is a French-Argentinian artist born in Buenos Aires in 1955, and he has been living and working in Paris since 1978. His artistic practice spans across various mediums, including sculpture, installation, design, architecture, and painting, with a primary goal of challenging and pushing the formal and conceptual boundaries within these art forms.
Since the 1970s, Reinoso has been creating a body of work organized in series, focusing on exploring the notion of materiality. He continuously questions and subverts the nature and limitations of diverse materials and techniques, such as wood, bronze, marble, steel, textile, and even air. His artistic research revolves around the interplay between objects and functionality, and he consistently investigates and reshapes the relationship between the two through his artistic creations.
The artist draws inspiration from using a wide range of materials, often incorporating construction elements or pre-existing objects from the domains of architecture and design. By doing so, his sculptures – like the Spaghetti Bench artworks – contribute to reconfiguring the primary functions of these materials beyond their conventional contexts of use, offering a fresh perspective and interpretation.
