Inflatable Installation to Cover Aspen Art Museum

The installation of My Dear Mountains will be the Gaetano Pesce’s first facade intervention and will be accompanied by an exhibition of his furniture and sculptures on the ground floor of the museum. Curated by Stella Bottai and supported by the Italian Council, the installation is being announced exactly fifty years after Pesce's first visit to the United States: Aspen was the first city he visited in 1971, when he attended the International Design Conference. 

The Aspen Art Museum praises Pesce in today's announcement, writing that the "multifaceted, artistic nature of his practice" enables him to "[move] fluidly and playfully across categorical definitions of objecthood. Making a virtue of incoherence, Pesce has remained independent from the sectors of mass industrial production and commercial distribution, prioritizing his stance as an artist and intellectual." That stance is accentuated in his own comments in the announcement, which are clearly critical of the museum's home that was designed by Shigeru Ban and opened to the public in 2014:

"The legacy of the International Style of architecture continues to produce buildings that avoid documenting the realities they inhabit, each of which has its specific identity and geographic location. For the Aspen Art Museum, I have risked creating a kitschy image for the sake of replacing the building’s gridlike façade with a view that is close to the one I admired during the memorable time I have spent in Aspen, the first city I visited in the United States and a place to which I have returned with pleasure over the years."

Though no dates are given for the monumental installation, My Dear Mountains will be unveiled in spring 2022.