Dear Shaded Viewers
Fall is still hectic in Paris after Art Basel back in the Grand Palais and the second edition of Design Miami. Another major yet discreet exhibition have open in the Mobilier National : Richard Peduzzi’s Perspectives.
Richard Peduzzi, french set designer is still active at 80. He has collaborated over 50 years with stage directors Patrice Chereau and Luc Bondy. After their passing, he could have stopped creating. But he is still drawing, concieving sets and furniture in his workshop. Drawing quietly on his desk next to the street near Montmartre. Every day, he’s quietly drawing listening to dramatic italian singers in his ground floor. Surronded by pictures taken by Penelope Chauvelot his wife and pictures of 80s sets, it’s almost like if Chereau was coming right now, convincing him to stage another play. Some says that an artist workshop is like is mind. The saying suits Peduzzi in a sense that every production he did could start again tonight with all those minutious paintings all around.
This major retrospective of his work is far from being an hommage. It’s a dive inside creativity. Inside the dark blue hall, we are immerged into an intense night. We are in ambiguous night, that devores and rassures us. That night is the one where Little Richard spent his childhood wandering in the post war Le Havre after the second world war Bombings. He used to be Living with his grandparents when his mother was arrested after having a love affair with a german soldier. Slides and sandbox cannot be your playground when you have a heartwrenching childhood. You can see some drawings réminiscent of that seaside city such as Drawings for Luc Bondy’s staging of Hercules (2004).
Then appears gouaches of eroded landscape. They are delimited norvegians valleys that he saw for Peer Gynt in a985. This is one of the most striking tour de force of Peduzzi : As a young man, he was quite indecisive. Before coming to the conclusion that he wanted to be a scenograph, he was cumulating jobs that he quickly gave up before reading Light in August by William Faulkner. He read the story of an eagle trying to fly higher and higher but peaked at one moment. He understood that no matter how you want to run away, the world is finite and still be a cage. So by creating stifling sets you will ask yourself : What can be behind ? Was the characters always living there ? Are his sets a leviathan-esque creature ? He confessed that his sets are breathing. We can see that, just looking at the plinths of the central alley. They are diagonally shaped, reclining towards us, inviting us to be around the furniture they hold.
As the happy contrepoint of the hall, the furniture is a testimony of the 35 years collaboration between him and the Mobilier National. The first one that we see is a black new edition of the ribbon chair from Luc Bondy’s Conte d’hiver. Realised in Cherry Wood, demonstrating the will from the will from the National institution to collaborate with artists, even with unconventional process. Then other pieces were unseen, they are geometrical with thin wood evocating the Memphis group. Peduzzi furniture is more demure, colors are a little bit sepia toned making it timeless. Put one in a gangster movie or in a period drama it will suit well. We’re almost going upstairs were we’re appealed by chairs descending from the celling. This playful approach was given by his daughter Antonine Peduzzi that understood well his creative process. With their colored check pattern cousins, we are transported in Italy. This Land of dreams that his father talked about each summer he visited him.
Upstairs we continue in a room with scale models. They are his greatest success with Patrice Chereau. A precious 45 years friendship inventoried to the core. There’s the beginning (Massacre a Paris, 1972) and the end of this unique part of life (Elektra, 2013). In reflecting cases, you can see those models. They are as textured as the final sets. Pedduzi says in his memoir Là bas c’est dehors that some were so successful that staff would cut up the walls to keep some parts home.
Then you finish in a lavish hall with pastel colors like in a Morandi painting. Inside a round structure there is numerous drawings hanged on the wall. It goes from felt tip sketches to ocher towers. In all of that mental research you are drawn to one framed painting. This lone tree in a night desert was for the unachieved project with Chereau : As if you like it by Shakespeare (2014). You finish the exhibition on an opening. An opening on three tapestry made with Carpet society. A specialized company that collaborated with french artists and festivals. They are reinterpretations of three paintings from his career, but finely broided and more nuanced than ever.
When you leave the exhibition, you pass by unrealised projects. But maybe on stage soo. They are moon shaped boats, with towers or creatures. Peduzzi might be like Daland in The Flying Dutchman : an elegent and tormented aventurer. Unsettled, he navigates from theater to theater. But instead of creating tragedies, he gives us a rare insight of human nature towards his massive universes.
Richard Peduzzi’s Perspectives
From October 16th to December 31st
Mobilier National
1 Rue Berbier du Mets, 75013 Paris
Writings (in French Only)
Là Bas c’est dehors, 2014
Je l’ai déjà joué demain,2021
Percussions/Discussions,2024
Actes Sud Editions