‘WORK/LIFE IMBALANCE’

A CELEBRATION OF GAETANO PESCE’S TBWA/CHIAT/DAY OFFICE (1994)

7.1.25-8.3.25 @ Kalei

Gaetano Pesce: Design as a Human Act

Gaetano Pesce (b.1939, La Spezia) was one of the most radical and emotionally expressive artists of the late 20th century. He embraced incoherence and treated design as an extension of the human experience. His work stands at many crossroads, embued with spirits that extend a hand and ask the viewer whether they wish to take it.

Pesce loved work and considered it a part of his life - a practice rather than a labor. This practice blurred the lines between the personal and the political, the functional and the fantastical. Pesce embraced imperfection, change, and experimentation - working with resin, foam, and fabric to create forms that stretch, ripple, and surprise.

Shop the collection

_____

“I don’t make things so they appear nice or elegant. I make objects to communicate different stories to people... My work is about communicating to those who are unique, to encourage them to stay different and true to themselves and their character.”

GAETANO PESCE, TBWA/CHIAT/DAY OFFICE, NEW YORK CITY, 1994

“I wanted to create the ad agency of the future. A place that would liberate people from the hierarchy, from the clutter, from the dreariness. I wanted it to feel like a cathedral of ideas.”

— Jay Chiat

Jay Chiat: Rethinking the Rules of Work

Jay Chiat, co-founder of the ad agency TBWA/Chiat/Day, was known not just for iconic campaigns — including Apple’s “1984” — but for pushing the boundaries of how creative work gets done. In the early 1990s, he set out to completely reinvent the agency’s headquarters in New York City. Only here would such a radical idea be born.

Chiat’s vision was simple but radical: no assigned desks, no filing cabinets, no personal clutter. Employees would check out their equipment each day from a window designed in the shape of an open mouth and lips (below), and then we imagine they went to check the desk they were at the day before to see if it was taken. This ever-changing working environment was characterized also by an ever-changing spatial environment which could only be formed by the mind of Gaetano Pesce.

WORK/LIFE IMBALANCE

7.1.25 - 8.3.25

___

As conversations around remote work, return-to-office mandates, and burnout continue to shape today’s workplace, WORK/LIFE IMBALANCE revisits a project that anticipated these tensions decades earlier. Gaetano Pesce and Jay Chiat envisioned an untethered office space where desks were unassigned and each day could look (and feel) entirely different, shaped by dripping resin, anthropomorphic forms, and new worlds around every corner. Pesce offered a sensorial, unruly alternative to business as usual long before tech campuses added their slides and game rooms.

The exhibition celebrates Pesce’s radical vision, 30 years later, presenting a wide selection of never before seen prototypes in addition to other selected works from Pesce and other designers.

___

WORK/LIFE IMBALANCE is on view at Kalei (159 Bowery, NYC) from July 1st to August 3rd, 2025

Click here for the full Inventory