Unwanted Guest: plastic surgery by Pierre Castignola
Pierre Castignola presents Unwanted Guest, a furniture collection crafted from deconstructed Pierre Paulin chairs.
Beneath the silver ceiling of the ITEM IDEM gallery—a sort of Warholian factory where creations by Castiglioni and Sottsass sit side-by-side on Starck shelves—Pierre Castignola presents his second solo show. It is a natural fit for a designer influenced by Italian radical design and interested in semiotics. True to his deconstructivist approach, he presents Unwanted Guest, an exhibition whose title evokes "the idea of a respectful subversion of the original work". For this occasion, the Tango chair designed by Pierre Paulin has been cut up and reassembled. Following in the footsteps of the Fauteuil 300, the first monobloc chair released in 1972, the Tango quickly became a staple of our summer landscapes. "I salvaged 39 of these chairs during the renovation of a swimming pool in Geldrop, in the suburbs of Eindhoven where I studied. I really liked their red color, but they sat in my studio for a long time without me knowing how to use them. Then one day, I decided to take four of them, cut them up somewhat randomly, and see what happened," explains Pierre Castignola. A radical approach that gave birth to the first of the 21 pieces that make up the collection. "My first solo show focused on the living room. For the second, I wanted something different, and since I consider myself, in a way, an involuntary guest in Pierre Paulin's world, the guest room came to me quite naturally, leading to several objects ranging from a chandelier to a foosball table."
A Re-cut Legacy
Neither a true homage nor a total break from Pierre Paulin’s work, Pierre Castignola offers a reinterpretation of the original furniture in the form of "countless variations." As an intentional transition from mass production to unique pieces, the designer also takes the opportunity to rethink his process. "I usually work with flexible plastic. However, this material is 3 to 4 millimeters thick, and its rigidity forced me to rethink my approach." Beyond the characteristic look of his objects, the designer delivers a collection where angles become sharper and curves are dictated more by the limitations of the plastic. "To make the armchair, I only used cut-out seat sections, whereas the stool is made entirely of armrests." These groupings by similarity make the designer less of "a shaper and more of a selector" guided as much by his imagination as by constraint. A structural peculiarity that also led the designer to reflect on Pierre Paulin’s legacy. "Someone once explained to me that Pierre Paulin made extensive use of tubing in his frames. It’s something I’ve adopted here to graft on my own approach and create something new, yet resonant." A confrontation between two worlds, as much as between two radically opposed eras.
Pierre Castignola’s exhibition Unwanted Guest, on view at ITEM IDEM, 12 rue Bleue, Paris, 9th arrondissement, from March 4 to April 12, 2026.
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