Anarchitecture, Gianni Pettena

In L’Anarchitetto. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Architect, published in 1973, Gianni Pettena defines himself as an “anarchitect”, an aspiring architect turned artist, writer, thinker, mediator, somewhat of a radical all roled into one, but one who looks at our environments and the fragility of the human and non-human entanglements that characterise them, attentively and from a political perspective. He adopts a conceptual approach, an architecture based on thought, preferring the creation of non-permanent installations and gestures to building logic. His works, including those presented in this exhibition, are rooted, in a performative approach to art and architecture to better disrupt frameworks and shift perceptions – they embody a breath of fresh air, a need to reimagine the way we live.

Taking visitors on a quasi-journey reflecting Gianni Pettena’s life and work, the exhibition unfolds across two geographies : on the ground floor, his native Italy – from the island of Elba to the Dolomite mountains, which Gianni Pettena refers to as his “school of architecture”; on the second floor, the ladforms and deserts of the American West, where he lived and taught in the 1970s.

The aim of presenting in this way the influences of the places which the artist has inhabited and roamed, alongside consideration of current ecological issues, is to underline the pioneering approach he has adopted since the late 1960s vis-à-vis the precariousness and importance of the living, ecological and emotional links that bind us to our environments. It is also to reassess the relevance, radicalism and peotry with which his architectures, continue to make an impact today.

Exhibition organised in collaboration with the Crac Occitanie in Sète.

Curator : Élodie Royer

Download the exhibition’s leaflet

Programme

Publication

Gianni Pettena, Anarchitecture
Orléans, Frac Centre-Val de Loire, Sète,
Crac Occitanie, Paris, Liénart Éditions
(co edition), 2024.
21 x 28cm, 168 pages
25€

Exhibitions images