Carrozzeria900, the Milanese space renowned since 2011 for turning design passion into a tangible reference for unique Modernist pieces, presents an immersive exhibition from November 19 to December 20, 2025: Mario Ceroli | Domestic Theater. This installation reconstructs a living environment with Ceroli’s furniture, allowing the artist’s mobili to express their most theatrical qualities and inviting visitors to experience design as stagecraft.
Mario Ceroli (born 1938) stands among Italy’s great late-twentieth-century artists. While celebrated for sculptural works, Ceroli is equally recognized for his scenographic installations spanning theater, cinema, television, and advertising. His design practice—many pieces of furniture, chairs, tables, sofas, armchairs, and beds—embodies a philosophy: objects do not merely decorate space; they reveal the hidden life of matter. Crafted primarily in wood, Ceroli’s furniture bears a distinctly artisanal touch, reflecting a commitment to manual workmanship that blurs the lines between craft and art.
The show centers on Ceroli’s furniture from the “Mobili nella Valle” (Furniture in the Valley) series, designed in the 1970s for Poltronova and handcrafted from pine wood sourced in Russia. Originally housed in a single country home owned by design enthusiasts, these pieces have entered Carrozzeria900’s orbit through the contemporary act of homage: a studio-based reconstruction of a plausible interior arrangement that foregrounds the furniture’s practical function as much as its aesthetic presence. The display positions Ceroli’s mobili as protagonists in a “domestic theater,” where symbols and traces of life emerge through quiet, intimate performance.
What to expect: A curated ensemble: chairs, tables, sofas, a dresser, an armchair, and a bed frame — all drawn from the Mobili nella Valle collection. Objects inspired by Giorgio De Chirico’s painted scenes, which place ordinary objects in unreal contexts to probe the rhetoric of furniture as an intimate symbol and a locus of familial life. Ceroli’s forms that echo both ancient art and contemporary culture, inviting viewers to confront the paradox of recognition and disorientation.
When asked about his approach to designer furniture, Ceroli observed: “Industry has rediscovered the furniture I designed for myself. The sensitivity given to a product like mine, which is less comfortable than a piece designed by an interior designer, is a different sensibility. In a designer furniture piece, there is a different thing—the relationship between object and person. In my furniture, you find that relationship, perhaps also because of this lack of comfort… the use of rough wood helps to create this relationship. These furnishings are, to me, sculptures to touch, to use. That is the connection I have with my furniture.”
Since its inception in 2011, Carrozzeria900 has operated as more than a shop; it is a cultural hub for design and Modernariato. It represents an ongoing exploration of how objects inhabit spaces, how design speaks to memory, and how a room can become a stage upon which material culture performs. The Domestic Theater exhibition embodies this spirit: it is a thoughtful homage to Ceroli’s interdisciplinary approach and a reminder that ordinary furnishings can carry extraordinary narratives.
In sum, Mario Ceroli | Domestic Theater offers a rare chance to inhabit Ceroli’s world—a space where furniture transcends utility to become a stage for life, memory, and imagination. It invites visitors to see the home not merely as shelter but as a theater in which objects perform, relationships unfold, and the soul of material life is revealed.
Photo credits: Carrozzeria900
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