For Her by Gaetano Pesce

Artist list

Gaetano Pesce

Simply titled “for her”, this new collection is composed of thirty pieces, and includes necklaces, bracelets, rings, and brooches.
Pesce’s facility with urethane resin makes it the perfect material for creating unique bodily adornments. Its malleability “allows the material to make the conclusion,” Pesce argues. “It forms itself freely, and assumes the final shape.” His belief that non-traditional materials produce interesting and innovative jewelry is further evidenced by the use of magnets to close the necklaces and bracelets in the “for her” collection.
“Resin is not necessarily a precious material,” Pesce adds, “but it becomes precious in the way it is worked.” And because resin is naturally transparent, it is easily mixed with different pigments, allowing the designer to utilize the signature bold colors he refers to as “alive,” and which characterize his world-renowned work.
Pesce’s four decades of practice has yielded groundbreaking buildings, furniture, and objects that blur boundaries and celebrate the creative process. His dramatic jewelry bears his familiar sensual aesthetic: necklaces resemble globs of paint dripping from an artist’s palette; another evokes shards of broken glass. And as with Pesce’s previous jewelry collections, each unique piece is named after a woman, and comes with a signed certificate of authenticity.


About the artist:
Gaetano Pesce was born in 1939, in La Spezia, Italy. After living in Venice, London, Helsinki and Paris, he moved to New York in 1980, where he still resides.
He wrote his first manifesto at the age of seventeen, and through his subsequent studies, travels, experimentations, and teaching, Pesce has become an iconic architect and designer. He taught for 28 years at the Institut d’Architecture et d’Etudes Urbaines in Strasbourg and has lectured at cultural institutes and universities around the world. His multidisciplinary designs have been included in the permanent collections of MoMA and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Vitra Design Museum in Germany, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, as well as other museums in Japan, Portugal, and Finland. His architectural, urban planning, exhibition, and interior design work is characterized by the bold use of color and revolutionary materials. Pesce’s interest in revolutionary materials and processes led to continuous innovations in language, formal results, and production modes. For example, the iconic Up5, La Mamma of the Up series (1969), was the first industrial design product bearing a political message. As a commentary on the status of women and the politics of male prejudice, the piece portrays a female body tied, or chained, like a prisoner to a footstool.
Among the most popular of Pesce’s exhibitions are the legendary Italy: The New Domestic Landscape shown at MoMA in 1972, the 1975 retrospective at the Paris Museum of Decorative Arts entitled Le future est peut-être passé, another retrospective entitled Gaetano Pesce: ltemps des questions shown at the Centre Pompidou in 1996, Gaetano Pesce: il rumore del tempo held at the Triennale of Milan in 2005, and the most recent Il Tempo della Diversitá at MAXXI in Rome in 2014.
Pesce has received many awards, including the "Chrysler Award for Innovation and Design" in 1993, the "Architektur & Wohnen Designer of the Year" in 2006, and the "Lawrence J. Israel Prize" awarded by the Fashion Institute of Technology of New York in 2009.

About the Gallery at Reinstein|Ross:
The Gallery at Reinstein|Ross was founded as a unique, New York City venue, to exhibit progressive work in studio art jewelry, as well as fine arts related to jewelry, precious stones and precious metals. Our mission is to bring international exposure to emerging and established art-ists, through promotion, education, and exhibition. The R|R Gallery presents regular group or solo exhibitions, and is interested in collaboration with other galleries, museums, and educational institutions.
The R|R Gallery is housed in a storefront space at the intersection of New York City's fashionable Meatpacking District and the West Village. The space is connected to, but separate from, the Gansevoort Street store and workshop of Reinstein|Ross, Goldsmiths. Founded in 1985, Reinstein|Ross is committed to high-karat gold, distinctive gemstones, and classical goldsmithing techniques. Reminiscent of ancient jewelry, but distinctly contemporary, Reinstein|Ross jewelry is hand-fabricated to impeccable standards in their New York City workshops.