A Chair & You

“A Chair and You” presents one of the world's largest private collections of chairs by over 100 designers, architects and artists, with a dedicated scenography by American theatre director and artist Robert Wilson.

The exhibition, curated by Chantal Prod’Hom and Charlotte Savolainen-Mailler, takes the form of an opera in four acts and as many stages. Light and sound amplify the dramaturgy, which tells the history of art and design from the 1960s to the present day. 

After being unveiled at the Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts (Mudac) in Lausanne in 2022 for the first time, the exhibition is on view at the GRASSI Museum of Applied Arts in Leipzig, Germany, until October 6^th, 2024, to mark the institution’s 150^th anniversary.

Over several decades and unbeknownst to the public, Swiss collector Thierry Barbier-Mueller has amassed an extensive collection of sculptural chairs which go well beyond their utilitarian function. 
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The chair is, in essence, an iconic object in the field of design. Historically, few domestic objects have been tested, redesigned, and explored by artists in such a way. The richness of collection lies in these intersections, confrontations, and combinations of different points of view.
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Inspired by this body of work at the intersection of art and design, Robert Wilson himself a keen chair collector, has imagined a spectacular set design that pays tribute to the specific characteristics of each of the 140 exhibited objects. In a dramatic staging, he invites visitors into immersive worlds in which the chairs become the protagonists of a theatre performance. 
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The collection brings together works by internationally renowned creative minds and lesser-known talents, including Ron Arad, Maarten Baas, Humberto and Fernando Campana, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Tom Dixon, Front, Martino Gamper, Garouste & Bonetti, Frank Gehry, Richard Hutten, Hella Jongerius, Daniel Libeskind, Michele de Lucchi, Xavier Lust, Enzo Mari, Ingo Maurer, Alessandro Mendini, Jasper Morisson, Nathalie du Pasquier, Gaetano Pesce, Oki Sato, Jerszy Seymour, Ettore Sottsass, Marcel Wanders, Stefan Wewerka, Tokujin Yoshioka, Oskar Zieta, as well as visual artists such as Donald Judd, Isamu Noguchi, Niki de Saint Phalle, Lawrence Weiner, Robert Wilson and Franz West, among others.  

“A chair is a chair for one and all! Revolutionary, wacky, innovative, humorous, ironic, joyous, elegant, boring, surprising, spare, mysterious, makeshift, cheeky, brutal, sophisticated, practical, impractical, or straight-out unusable, the character of each piece is understandable to everyone.”
Thierry Barbier-Mueller