Exhibition Overview

Martino Gamper’s internationally acclaimed project 100 Chairs in 100 Days arrives at the Benaki Museum, marking the museum’s first exhibition devoted entirely to design. In this landmark series, Gamper collected discarded chairs from across London and reassembled them over one hundred consecutive days, creating unique works that challenge our understanding of form, function, and value.

The result is a vibrant and evolving “three-dimensional sketchbook.” Each chair combines different histories, shapes and materials, demonstrating Gamper’s remarkable ability to transform humble and forgotten objects into imaginative and thought-provoking pieces.

For the exhibition in Athens, Gamper continued this process in real time. He created a new chair during a live performance at the Benaki Museum, using discarded chairs found on the streets of Athens. The work, titled Niketino and inspired by the Winged Victory of Samothrace, reflects the project’s spirit of reinvention and its dialogue with place. The making of this chair was filmed and is presented within the exhibition, offering visitors a rare view into the spontaneity and energy of Gamper’s practice.

At the heart of the exhibition lies a compelling idea: the perfect chair does not exist. Drawing on Plato’s Theory of Forms, the project suggests that perfection belongs to the realm of ideas rather than material reality. Through this lens, Gamper invites us to embrace imperfection as a catalyst for creativity and to view design as a continuous journey of exploration and transformation.

Curatorial Framework

The curatorial framework for this exhibition emphasized clarity, openness, and an almost studio-like immediacy. The wooden floor of the museum was transformed into a pristine white surface, creating a neutral ground that functioned as a canvas for Gamper’s three-dimensional sketchbook. This deliberate gesture allowed each chair to be read as an individual thought, a sculptural note, and a moment within an ongoing creative process, while also revealing the collective rhythm of the ensemble.

Upon entering the space, visitors first encountered the shadow of Niketino, the chair Gamper created in Athens using discarded chairs found throughout the city. This spectral silhouette introduced the exhibition not through a physical object, but through its idea, echoing Plato’s Theory of Forms and setting the tone for the experience to follow. In this way, the exhibition invited viewers to move between physical presence and conceptual reflection, between object and image, and between what design is and what it might become. The chairs unfolded like pages of a notebook in space, encouraging contemplation, curiosity, and an appreciation of process over perfection.

Performance

Live creation of the Niketino chair in Athens

A few days before the exhibition opened, Gamper constructed the Niketino chair live at the Benaki Museum, continuing his tradition of creating a site-specific 100th chair in the cities where the project is shown. The filmed process is screened within the exhibition, offering visitors insight into his intuitive, improvisational making.

All photographs and text © 2025 by Alexia Antsakli Vardinoyanni – www.artflyer.net