An editorial and curatorial project marks three decades of one of the most distinctive explorations in Italian design. During miart and Milan Design Week, “L’arte in prima persona,” presented by Schiavi and CRAMUM, celebrates the artistic path of Carla Tolomeo‘s sculptural chairs. This initiative aims to showcase the complexity of a practice that, since the mid-1990s, has progressively redefined the boundaries between art, design, and craftsmanship.
Launched in 1996, the series of chair-sculptures represents a significant turning point in the artist’s research. Tolomeo, who initially trained as a painter and gained recognition from figures like Giorgio de Chirico and Renato Guttuso, began to liberate the quintessential everyday object – the chair – from its original function. It became a medium for transformation, a narrative device, and an open form capable of incorporating natural inspirations, personal memories, and imaginative visions.
«The key word is transformation. Since 1996, I always start with an abandoned object, a seat discarded by consumer society, to give it new life. Because transformation is part of our existence: it is often painful, sometimes traumatic, but necessary. And above all, it is up to us to try to transform even what appears ugly or wounded in life into something beautiful,» says Carla Tolomeo to Sabino Maria Frassà, artistic director of Cramum. This very balance defines the core of Tolomeo’s project. She identifies a latent potential in discarded objects – broken, incomplete, time-marked chairs – ready to re-emerge through a process that is both intuitive and profoundly structured.
This is not a mere act of recovery but a true rewriting of reality, impacting both form and meaning. «Yes, because things shouldn’t just be endured; they should be changed, in action, not just in thought. Because a chair is never just a chair; and, ultimately, in life, nothing is ever simply what it seems. We need to understand that reality is often cruel and it is up to us to try to bend it, to make it better.»
In the artist’s work, transformation is not a decorative gesture but a radical engagement with the material, resulting in animal, vegetal, or fantastical forms – dolphins, parrots, turtles, roses – capable of activating a dimension suspended between dream and presence. This imagery does not evade reality but lightens it, opening it to new perceptual possibilities.
«It’s not about denying reality, but about transforming it into something that lightens it, that removes it from the heaviness, from the boredom of the everyday. I make people dream with their eyes open, because life is meant to be lived, not just thought about.» What makes this language recognizable is also a working method that rejects rigid design schemes. Tolomeo proceeds by intuition, relying on an immediate perception of proportions and colors, in continuity with her painting background. «I feel them. It’s hard to explain otherwise. I feel them, it’s an instinct. I always worked like this in painting too.»
Over time, this process has given rise to a body of work that is coherent yet constantly evolving, maintaining a strong identity while undergoing formal and material variations. Her research has been exhibited in museums, galleries, and international contexts, and it continues to question the relationship between function and imagination. Not surprisingly, Tolomeo’s chairs do not relinquish their original nature. They remain habitable objects, designed to be experienced as well as observed.
«Yes, of course. They must be used. If I wanted to make an object for its own sake, I would make sculpture: I have worked with marble, I make ceramics. Here, instead, I want to create something in which one can live, something that can make people happy who encounter it. Not just contemplation, but experience.»
Thirty years after their inception, the chair-sculptures are confirmed as a complex device where art and life intertwine seamlessly. The “L’arte in prima persona” project not only tells their story today but also highlights their relevance, offering a reflection on the transformative power of art and the enduring possibility of imagining new ways of inhabiting reality.
