Study for rearranging the conference table evolved from Pica’s 2020 exhibition at Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich, titled Round Table (and other forms). Using generic boardroom furniture as a starting point, Pica created a group of Formica and plywood tables on wheels in her emblematic formal language of geometric shapes and bright colours. These were reconfigured each day in kaleidoscopic arrangements by museum staff, in a joyful performance contrasting the workaday corporate humdrum and staticity of the works’ source of inspiration.
Spanning over five meters and consisting of fourteen panels, Study for rearranging the conference table is the largest in a series examining the choreographic possibilities of these tabletops, reproduced on a smaller scale and supplanted onto the wall. The individual shapes – semicircles, trapeziums, and rectangles – stay true to those of existing tables in office furniture catalogues, commonly used as modules for larger conference arrangements allowing for formal communication and defined hierarchies. Pica instead plays with the configuration, producing a meandering composition and inviting viewers to imagine the conversations which would take place if they were sat around such a whimsical formation.
