Andrea Branzi's “Contemporary DNA”

Title: “Contemporary DNA” 

Date: 10:00 AM March 2 to 6:00 PM April 22, 2023 

Venue: Friedman Benda New York 

Address: 515 W 26th St 1st Floor 

Subway: C or E train to 23rd Street 

Event Website: www.friedmanbenda.com

In the seminal Florence designer and architect’s third solo exhibition at Friedman Benda, Andrea Branzi’s post-war voice transmutes intuitive process and research into physical forms of three new bodies of work: Roots, Germinal Seats, and Buildings. Through the wooden sculptural works, self-described as “neoprimitivism,” Branzi’s industrial sensibility understands objects as living presences to be related to psychologically, symbolic, and poetically: the fragments of a barely-known anthological universe.

The first two bodies, Roots and Germinal Seats, in their sculptures of sticks, bamboo, and driftwood, highlights a dichotomy of commodity and nature. Things abandoned become the preserved relics of an unknown, noble past. They are the architectural artifacts of another complex world, colorfully industrial and precisely artisanal. The last, Buildings, is constructed of a series of cabinets and vessels for the personal artifacts of the quotidian. Branzi frames urbanism not in infrastructure, but the micro-environments of memory.

Artist: Andrea Branzi 

Watch Andrea Branzi’s three-part interview with design historian Dr. Catharine Rossi HERE.