TEN: BEYOND THE BEETLE
10 creative responses to a contemporary classic at GUBI SALONE 2023
TEN YEARS
TEN CREATIVES
TEN STORIES
In TEN, a selected group of creatives pays homage to a chair that has cemented itself in our collective imagination. Ten personalities from the worlds of fashion, art, architecture, and music have been invited to take part in a cultural project that investigates and responds to the potential of the Beetle Chair.
Ten years ago, GamFratesi began by studying nature and biomimicry, going on to adapt the forms and volumes that they observed. Today, these 10 creatives have activated another interpretative mechanism. They pick up where GamFratesi and GUBI finish their work as designer and producer, so the chair becomes a starting point for personal reflection, absorbing the languages, formats, materials, and techniques of each personality.
SCARABESQUE
Adam Nathaniel Furman, London
In ‘Scarabesque’, artist and designer Adam Nathaniel Furman has accentuated the form of the Beetle and used color and pattern to transform the chair into a fabulous throne, suggesting new contexts for the design, from the club to a fairytale musical.
OCA CHAIR
Arthur Arbesser, Milan
In the ‘Oca Chair’, fashion designer Arthur Arbesser pays homage to the late master of Italian design, Enzo Mari. Arbesser has transformed the seat and backrest of the Beetle into the snapping bill of a goose, while the base references Mari’s cement panettone dispersed all over the Milan cityscape.
FRESHENING UP THE PALACE
Daphne Christoforou, Cyprus
‘Freshening Up the Palace’ by visual artist and ceramicist Daphne Christoforou is a hand-crafted amphora decorated with underglaze, decals, overglaze and gold luster. Inspired by Ancient Greek pottery, the vessel depicts a mythical scene in which GamFratesi introduces the Beetle to the gods of Olympus.
REAL BEETLE IN EPOXY
Frank Maria, Vienna
In ‘Real Beetle in Epoxy’, artist Frank Maria reinterprets the Beetle as an archaeological sculpture encrusted with mineral sediments and adorned with original tattoo designs and micro-landscapes. The beetle’s exoskeleton is constructed from wood and paper, with an acrylic paint coating, held within a 120x120 cm casing in wood and plexiglass.
METAMORFOSI
Painé Cuadrelli, Milan
In ‘Metamorfosi’ sound designer Painé Cuadrelli has created an immersive audiovisual installation that turns human soundbites, hard percussion, and natural sounds into a melodic composition that depicts the birth and evolution of the Beetle, from pupa to beautifully developed creature.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEATING
Martin Groch, Brussels
‘A Brief History of Seating’ is a series of ten original ink drawings by graphic designer and illustrator Martin Groch, composing a narrative that positions the Beetle in the context of its most illustrious predecessors, icons of international design.
TEN
Matthew Demarco, Malta
Creative director Matthew Demarco has produced the exhibition signage to commemorate the Beetle’s anniversary. Created with a reverse glassgilding technique and several layers of gold leaf, ‘TEN’ is a square, framed 85x85 cm sign referencing the traditional Maltese typography and signage seen in the city of Valletta.
FLYING BEETLES
Rachaporn Choochuey, Bangkok
Architect Rachaporn Choochuey’s interpretation of the Beetle is inspired by the climate, traditions, and culture of Asia. Her installation, ‘Flying Beetles’, is rooted in the relationship between exterior and interior, and takes inspiration from Thai street culture, markets, and open-air seating, with reference to the winged insects found in Thailand’s national parks.
(DI)SSECTED BEETLE
Simon Wick, Copenhagen
Fashion designer Simon Wick offers up a ‘(di)ssected Beetle’. The deconstructed seat is reassembled with layers of GUBI’s surplus textiles and upholstery offcuts, as well as packaging materials such as cardboard and plastic.
LIVING THE HORIZON
Ximena Muñoz, Chile
In the installation ‘Living the Horizon’, lighting designer Ximena Muñoz combines moving images with suspended neon-LED lighting. Interpreting the meeting of the Beetle’s seat and the backrest as the line of the horizon, a fourmeter video projection shows the changing horizon in the Pacific Ocean over a period from March to November 2022, while curved light interacts with the projection and introduces a note of intimacy to the experience.
CURATOR´S NOTE
This year, the Beetle Chair by GamFratesi turns 10 years old. When it first made its appearance at Milan Design Week, it was very much an experiment – a design exploration not seriously intended for commercial production. Then GUBI saw it, and history was made.
Not long after its Salone debut, the Beetle concept became a reality, thanks to the industrial willpower of a company that understood the potential of the design from the outset. Today, the Beetle Chair is famous. You come across it in restaurants, homes, and hotels all over in the world. You spot it in social media posts and in glossy interiors shoots. It frequently crops up in conversations between designers and architects when they want to give an example of a design concept that successfully combines trend, quality, moderation, comfort, and versatility. The Beetle has taken flight.
Over the course of a decade, the Beetle has become beloved, instantly recognizable, and timeless evidence that GamFratesi’s aesthetic and compositional choices have met with the approval of more than one section of the public. Through their design, its creators have built an emotional relationship with the wider design audience, who feel a genuine affection for the piece, rooted in the extraordinary versatility of the design, the reliability of the structure, the solid ergonomics, the smooth lines, and the elegance of the upholstery and finishings.
The architect and designer Alessandro Mendini used to say that objects have a soul; they have power over people, bringing back memories and creating habits. In the Beetle, GamFratesi and GUBI have achieved this.
In TEN, a selected group of creatives pays homage to a chair that has cemented itself in our collective imagination. Ten personalities from the worlds of fashion, art, architecture, and music have been invited to take part in a cultural project that investigates and responds to the potential of the Beetle Chair.
Ten years ago, GamFratesi began by studying nature and biomimicry, going on to adapt the forms and volumes that they observed. Today, these 10 creatives have activated another interpretative mechanism. They pick up where GamFratesi and GUBI finish their work as designer and producer, so the chair becomes a starting point for personal reflection, absorbing the languages, formats, materials, and techniques of each personality.
Each has taken an element, a detail, or a quality of the Beetle, and transformed it into a story in the form of a soundscape, an installation, a typological alteration, or a narrative transposition. Key to the project is the absolute expressive freedom, playful use of scale, and the range of creative languages and media chosen by each of the contributors.
The artworks in TEN are a counter melody, an exag- geration, a joke, a vision, an extension, and finally an escape. They all take the Beetle Chair beyond the limits of function, into the far-off lands of the poetic. Each interpretation exalts the comfort, solidity, quality, and balance of an object that began as mere furniture but became so much more.
– Marco Sammicheli, curator, TEN: Beyond the Beetle