Ever since his childhood, Robert Stadler has found power in the tiny details of objects and the narratives they can evoke, opening up imaginary universes that simultaneously tie in and vie with everyday life. Pursuing the possibilities of this path led to Stadler studying design at the Istituto Europeo di Design, Milan, before attending the École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle, Paris in the late 1980s. He has continued to work in Paris ever since.  Stadler’s interests encompass both what he terms “aristocratic design”; conceived by serious designers, manufactured by elegant companies, and objects typically deemed or vulgar or absurd by connoisseurs of the former. To Stadler, beauty and merit can be found in each alike. Common to the majority of Stadler’s oeuvre is a questioning of objects’ established identities. Frequently, his furniture works at once convey and destroy pre-conceived notions of what an object should be. Such evocation of dissolution, in tandem with the physical reality of functional furniture, introduces an element of chaos to the medium. Although works such as his Possible Furniture series may at times appear haphazard, they are in fact perfectly constructed to fulfill their ergonomic purpose. Stadler’s ambition when producing a new work is that its artistic dimension doesn’t reduce its design credibility and vice-versa.

© Andre Morin