MURA · THE COLLECTION

The Pear Meeting

Five pears the size of people sit around a wooden table in a warm Mediterranean room, each in its own chair, with cups of coffee, a bowl of small pears and a sprig of olive in a jug. One chair, nearest us, is empty. The meeting has started without us.

Mura Studio · 2026 · Gouache · Contemporary · story written 25 September 2026

What is going on

Nothing is said, and that is the point. The pears are green, russet, yellow, brown and blush, and they sit the way people sit: one leaning in, one upright, one slumped a little. The room is painted in the dry, chalky manner of a fresco, all terracotta and cream, with a window onto cypresses on the left and an arch of deeper red on the right. It is a room in which serious things are decided slowly.

How to look at it

Count the chairs, then the pears, then the cups. There are six chairs and five pears, and the empty chair is turned towards you. The bowl of small pears in the middle of the table is the quiet, slightly alarming detail: the meeting is about them. Then step back and see the whole thing as colour: five warm rounds against a warm room, the only cool note the olive leaves in the jug.

Why it is in Mura

Beautifully Strange, mood dreamy. On a television it is an invitation; the chair is empty for whoever is on the sofa.