Gianni Pettena—Anarchitecture

In a bid to break down barriers between disciplines, Gianni Pettena (born in Bolzano in 1940) has never ceased to question through art the foundations of our architecture by challenging and criticising functionalism at all costs and the established social and capitalist orders that predetermine both our everyday behaviour and the way in which our living environments are designed.

 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.

Exhibition: Gianni Pettena—Anarchitecture
Curator: Élodie Royer / In partnership with Crac Occitanie (Sète). 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 landforms 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.

Publication: Gianni Pettena—Anarchitecture
Coproduction: Lienart Editions, Frac Centre-Val de Loire, Crac Occitanie / Bilingual edition french english. Bringing together archive images and texts, some of which have never been published before, this book sheds new light on the relevance, radicalism and poetry with which this unclassifiable practice, at the crossroads of art and architecture, continues to work today.

Texts by Marie Cozette (director of the Crac Occitanie), Bruno Persat (artist and teacher at the Beaux-Arts in Nantes), Gianni Pettena (artist and architect), Élodie Royer (independent curator and researcher at the ENS within the SACRe laboratory), Emanuele Quinz (art and design historian) and James Wines (architect).

Christelle Kirchstetter: Director of Frac Centre-Val de Loire.