Outdoor Sculpture

A HOT-HUED “FISH” CHAIR LANDS IN A GARDEN
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables, Florida, is home to some three thousand horticultural species—palms, cycads, tropical fruits, and many other rare and unusual plants and trees. In recent years the eighty-three-acre garden has also hosted major outdoor exhibitions of both art and design—works that play off the extraordinary array of plants and trees.

This year, designer Satyendra Pakhalé was named for the job; a self-proclaimed “cultural nomad” who was born and educated in India, studied in Switzerland, and then moved to Holland to work and teach, Pakhalé is represented by Gabrielle Ammann in Cologne, Germany, and was selected for this project by the New York–based design gallerist Cristina Grajales.

Pakhalé says that he was particularly inspired by the “vividly colorful” butterflies he saw in the garden’s Wings of the Tropics exhibition. Thus, he reconfigured his molded thermoplastic Fish Chair, first produced by Cappellini in 2005, in a new vivid color that Pakhalé terms “viola.” He regards the Fish Chair as both seat and sculpture and says that it “is an object that suggests something instead of representing anything.” Though the limited edition of this chair will total ninety-nine, some forty of them will dot the Fairchild grounds through May. fairchildgarden.org