The unique work of Jean Nouvel for Arte Sella, it is a table which is named Dispersion, Disparition. It is made of one single piece in “cocciopesto,” color “Pompeii Red.” It is a monolith, elemental, singular and original. Its fabrication was made possible thanks to the research center Calchera San Giorgio and to the engineering of the Politecnico of Milan. It is installed in the park of the Villa Strobele.

One could think that Nouvel has inverted the perspective: the exterior — the landscape — becomes interior, inviting the great beech trees of the park to participate in this bucolic meal to which the visitors are invited.

The work is therefore deliberately an experience, usable, and following the new vision of Arte Sella, it puts us in contact immediately and without filter with Nature; but also with ourselves and the others, thus becoming a living part of the work, whether it be there or absent, dispersed.

The choice of the material is surprising: the famous French laureate of the Pritzker prize shows us that the sometimes overused concept of “durability” is no longer the exclusive domain of wood. Indeed, faience is a material recovered and recycled since the era of the Romans (who drew it from the dump of the hill of Testaccio), and Nouvel envisions its use and its recycling. He has moreover asked that the table be demolished at his disappearance, so that even the mass of bricks becomes ephemeral and become afterward something else.

For this reason, a mallet and a pickaxe have been fixed under the table; they belonged to an Italian carpenter and joiner emigrated in the last century to Marseille, and will be used to “demolish” the table when the Master will have disappeared. The intention is not iconoclastic — the iron of the internal reinforcements will be recycled and cast, then kept by Arte Sella.

A provocation? An incitement above all to reflect on matter and nature, without prejudice nor dogma, as the great French master has always done.

Editor