The Kandissi sofa is part of Alessandro Mendini’s Redesign series for Studio Alchimia. Mendini coined the term to describe his own design practice that assembled existing signs and symbols into new configurations to challenge the notion of originality. He added decoration and cut-out forms both to well-known modernist objects, including Marcel Breuer’s Wassily, and anonymously produced furniture. The Kandissi sofa’s form was inspired by a found Biedermeier sofa. Mendini decorated his piece with brightly painted wooden forms in irregular shapes and upholstered it in bold patterned fabric – a cue taken from early twentieth-century Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky’s abstract motifs. The sofa was part of a Kandissi trio, alongside a mirror and wall hanging, first exhibited as an ensemble at the L’oggetto banale exhibition organized by Studio Alchimia for the 1980 Biennale di Venezia. It typifies Mendini’s postmodern design approach: the modernist dictum of ‘form follows function’ and its denial of ornament are rejected in favor of seemingly banal decoration and multiple cultural cues.
