#meta memphis

[josephmagliaro]

Meta Memphis exhibition poster, 2015

[josephmagliaro]

Meta Memphis at TOC, installation/exhibition design, 2015

[josephmagliaro]

Meta Memphis at TOC, vinyl, 2015. 

[atableofcontents]

Some images from our recent Meta Memphis installation.

In 1987 Ettore Sottsass and the cadre of global designers working collectively as Memphis announced that they would no longer develop new work under that banner. The movement launched at Milan’s Arc ’74 showroom in 1981 came to a close. The legacy of Memphis, and the organization responsible for its preservation and continued distribution did, however, live on.

This organization, Memphis s.r.l., was formed in June of 1981, several months after the initial meetings at which the founding members of Memphis planned their opening salvo into the field of contemporary design. Its mission was to provide the funding and distribution necessary to realize a collection of commercial products free of any precedent or proven market viability. Its forward-looking benefactor, Ernesto Gismondi, took on the role of president and majority shareholder of the new organization.

The departure of the original team of designers who had launched the Memphis movement left the company in a challenging position. The initial collective had effected such a remarkable upheaval in contemporary culture that to continue the project without them would be unthinkable. It was thus determined that for Memphis to continue, it would have to do so in a new form, under a new name: Meta Memphis.

To distinguish this new iteration, art director Carlotta De Bevilacqua and gallerist Giorgio Persono were selected to invite a cast of contemporary artists to collaborate on a collection of functional objects. Ten artists—Alighieri e Boetti, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Sandro Chia, Joseph Kosuth, Maurizio Mochetti, Mimmo Paladino, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Susana Solano, Lawrence Weiner, and Franz West—were invited to contribute to the first collection, which was exhibited at the Palazzo Querini Stampalia in Venice from June 1-18, 1989. A second collection was produced in 1991 with new work from many of the initial contributors, as well as additional artists, including Marco Bagnoli, Mathis Esterhazy, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Gerhard Merz, Juliao Sarmento, and Bill Woodrow.  

The Meta Memphis collection is a departure from the original Memphis project in that many of the pieces have been limited to editions of 25, rather than remaining uneditioned consumer products. There is a continuity, however, in the spirit with which Meta Memphis approaches objects, a spirit that Barbara Radice describes as an awareness that “an object exists as a system of signs, as a catalyst of emotions, as a representation of a cultural state, as a container of values or information that one wants to possess, as an active presence, a reassuring wink—in other words, as an instrument of communication.”

[atableofcontents]

In 2008 we started a project called Table of Contents as an occasional platform for experimenting with the retail encounter. We would set up a make-shift table in Berlin’s public squares and markets, and attempt to sell a single object, often in a small edition, for a day, maybe two. The objects we sold varied: a significant book, a set of trestle legs like the ones employed by our own table, a series of plastic bags filled with air gathered from the sites of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing...

After moving to Portland in 2009, we began to consider how Table of Contents could develop in a new location. We settled on the idea of expanding the project with a more permanent space, a more “traditional” retail environment. But we were committed to the notion that the goal of running a shop should be similar to that of producing a magazine—the formation of a record of ideas, objects, and people that add up to a personal essay on the contemporary moment. Barbara Radice’s introduction to the premiere issue of Terrazzo has been something of a guidepost for us on this matter, and since we can’t say it better, we’ll let her do the talking: "Doing a magazine is like writing a book or making a movie; you never know what you'll end up with and not knowing is part of the amusement. You start because you think you have something to say, something urgent or different or new, something very important, maybe even vital. What you want to communicate is not necessarily a thought, a line of argument or an idea with a beginning and an end, but more often—as now—a mood, an attitude, a predilection of the soul, a vision bearing the faintest blur of utopia." Our vision for TOC is shifting this fall; rather than offering a selection of seasonally-themed objects, we will be presenting a series of exhibitions. In a sense, we’ll be returning to the origins of TOC: a single object or related series of objects will be displayed for a set period of time. These exhibitions will draw from historical, contemporary, and newly-developed works bordering between art and design. But before we begin, we’ll be closing our doors from August 15 through early-September to refresh the space and prepare for TOC’s new project-oriented program. We will reopen with an installation of works commissioned in the late 1980s and early 90s by the seminal Italian design project, Memphis Milano. After officially ending the production of Memphis in 1987, this work, which was launched under the banner of "Meta Memphis," marked the beginning of the movement's second act. What comes next? the work seems to ask—an appropriate question as we begin this new chapter for TOC.