More Than Meets the Eye: OMG-GMO Whimsical Ceramic Objects by Robert Stadler.

Mute Mix. Photo Filippo Telaro.

Vita Mix Chandelier. Photo by Alejandro Ramirez Orozco.

OMG GMO Ceramic Objects by Robert Stadler for Carwan Gallery. Photo by Filippo Telaro.

Photo Filippo Telaro.

Photo Filippo Telaro.

Paris-based Robert Stadler presented OMG-GMO, a series of whimsical ceramic functional objects for Carwan Gallery this Fuorisalone 2023 with a Milan exhibition curated by Nicolas Bellavance-Lecompte, presented in partnership with 5VIE. More than two years in the making, the objects were handmade by the leading Italian, family-owned ceramics company Bitossi Ceramiche.

Known for his diverse work—which includes industrial design, installation, curation, and performance—the Austrian-born designer has been engaging with current issues in a critical and intellectual way throughout his decades-long career. With OMG-GMO, Robert offers a witty comment on the relationship between humans and their environment, as seen through the genetic manipulation of fruit and vegetables. Yellow bananas, fleshy avocados, leeks, carrots, and many other staples of our shopping baskets are transformed into humorous functional objects, in what is perhaps the designer’s most playful work to date.

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In dialogue with the decades-long history between fruit, art and design, Robert highlights the artificiality of the tame fruit and vegetables we cultivate and consume, highlighting the fact that their current form is the result of a very long process of agricultural domestication, selective breeding, and bioengineering. For the OMG-GMO project, Robert Stadler borrows the forms of these engineered fruits and vegetables to create ten ceramic, hand-painted objects that ironically transform the organic into something structural and functional.

Conceived as a series of small-scale monuments, these objects both criticise and mock human manipulation of nature: a slice of a Japanese rectangular seedless watermelon becomes a stool, zucchini bend in a perfect L shape to create a set of shelves, and wheel-like aubergines support a glass coffee table, as a reference to Gae Aulenti’s iconic Tavolo con Ruote.

OMG-GMO is exclusively available for acquisitions through Carwan Gallery, for more information click here.

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OMG GMO Ceramic Objects by Robert Stadler for Carwan Gallery. Photo by Alejandro Ramirez Orozco.

The OMG GMO installation view at Milan Design Week 2023. Photos by Alejandro Ramirez Orozco.

[Images courtesy of Carwan Gallery. Photography by Filippo Telaro, Alejandro Ramirez Orozco & Michael Biondo.]