“Visionary Dictionary: Beppe Giacobbe from A to Z” is the first monograph dedicated to the art of illustration master Beppe Giacobbe. Born in Milan in 1953 and having studied…
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Championed for her eclectic eye and design style, Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola is one of the most sought-after minds in contemporary design. To offer a comprehensive look at her expansive portfolio of architectural projects and product…
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Furniture design described through various thematic lenses in a new book from the Brazilian design duo
by Felipe Meres São Paulo design duo Luciana Martins and Gerson de Oliveira of Ovo have recently released Mobiliário_OVO, a book about their furniture design, iconic objects and art projects. For more than a decade the designers have developed an array of exquisite and clever pieces that are at once…
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An up-to-date monograph of the adventurous designer
Tracking Marc Newson‘s rise from student to superstar, Taschen’s new monograph simply titled “Marc Newson. Works” promises to be the most complete catalogue of the designer’s significant oeuvre. With text in English, French and German, the book chronologically traces his design language across categories from furniture to transportation. Newson, it turns out, is one hell of an experimenter. He touches on virtually every conceivable aspect of the built environment, with materials ranging from riveted aluminum and fiberglass to Carrara marble and thermo-polyurethane. Newson’s work bridges fine art and industrial production—just as fit for the Gagosian Gallery as it is for a Nike collaboration.
Totaling 609 full-color pages, it is clear from the outset that the book is a comprehensive collection. Newson’s first work—a series of impractical aluminum bracelets—is a far cry from his later efforts in futuristic transportation. His “Kelvin 40” (2004) is a recreational aircraft inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Solaris. Complete with stealth looks and a gaping void on the nose, it fits the bill of an alien machine. Another ambitious project is “Bodyjet” (2010), a jetpack complete with retractable landing gear and propulsion arms that emerge in massive tubes from the engine. While neither creation has entered production, Newson is almost uncannily adept at translating his sense of space from furniture to theoretical mechanics.
While much of Newson’s work was done as one-off experiments, his collaborations are likely to thank for his status as a household name. The “Zvezdochka Sneaker” (2004) is the product of his work with Nike. The shoe—inspired by the International Space Station—is meant as an ideal space shoe, with an injection-molded thermo-polyurethane shell around a bootie that works for both exercise and cabin lounging.
More recently, Newson worked with Pentax to create the K-01 digital camera that rocked the tech and design worlds. Reflecting on the K-01’s boxy design, Newson says, “When form becomes arbitrary, surfaces become nebulous and lose their logic. I think they become gratuitous.”
In the world of fine art, Newson is probably best remembered for the Gagosian Exhibitions (2007-2008). The massive collection exemplifies the common thread of space and void as well as the designer’s preoccupation with exposing the interior of forms. The “Voronoi Shelf” was part of this exhibition, created from a five metric-ton block of Carrara marble and cut with computer-generated Voronoi cells. The degree of complexity, the proportions and delicacy of the piece all serve to showcase Newson’s unique design aesthetic.
“Marc Newson. Works” is available September 2012 from Taschen and on Amazon.
A comprehensive look at 16 years of contemporary design spanning products, architecture and art installations
Aiming to rethink the way we interact with design in our everyday lives, Paris-based Matali Crasset creates unconventional work in nearly every area of design from products and interiors to architecture and art, asserting herself as one of the most acclaimed and intriguing designers in contemporary culture. Celebrating this extensive body of work is “Matali Crasset: Works“, a massive monograph spanning 16 years of diverse projects.
Organized in reverse chronological order and separated into color-coded sections whose graduated pages form an easily navigable and nicely graphic index, the book offers a visual timeline of Crasset’s design portfolio from 1995-2011 with insightful essays and more than 700 brightly hued images. Her clever and colorful designs create their own social narrative through multi-use spaces and objects in the designer’s distinct way that esteemed curator Zoe Ryan says extends “beyond traditional questions of form and function” in the book’s introduction.
Bucking conventional methods by publishing the introduction on the yellow hard cover, the anthology starts before even being opened, asking the reader, “Do Matali Crasset’s designs playfully return experience to its central place in our relationship with the world?” At the same time that Ryan points out Crasset’s boundless style, she outlines the designer’s three fundamental values—conviction, an heuristic approahc and a horizon—before we even open the book.
One clear example of Masset’s spirit of design can be seen in Phytolab, a transparent educational room where students learn the benefits of plant life simply by being surrounded by it. This unique design encourages guests to interact with the plants through gardening, drawing a connection to how we view and care of ourselves. The innovative laboratory of sorts embodies Casset’s drive to improve the way we experience design and navigate our surroundings.
The comprehensive “Matali Crasset: Works” is now available directly through Rizzoli and from Amazon as well. For a deeper look into Matali Crasset: Works see the gallery below.
The designer’s first monograph explores his commitment to scientifically informed creations
For his first monograph, Matthieu Lehanneur has opted to express his design standpoint through the medium of his past works. Since his 2001 graduation from the ENSCI-Les Ateliers, he has stunned the community with a decade of innovative production in industrial and interior design. The bound collection from Gestalten looks at Lehanneur’s design language with accompanying essays by the MoMA’s Paola Antonelli and Ross Lovegrove, in addition to a conversation between Lehanneur and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Over the course of his ever-evolving career, Lehanneur has honored his commitment to marry science with design through inventions like the “Andrea” air purifier, which uses plants to naturally filter toxins from the air. The book highlights such favorites as it traces the development of his concept to create practical solutions for everyday living by working alongside members of the scientific community.
Other featured items include his design for a recuperative sleeping station, ceramic pottery based on U.N. population data, a weather forecaster for use in terminally ill hospital wards and S.M.O.K.E., an ethereal lamp made to imitate the appearance of compound bubbles that plays on the problem of air pollution. All of Lehanneur’s designs share the common thread of cross-discipline innovation, beautifully outlined in this monograph.
Deadstock film recaptures a decades-old conflict in a new exhibition
As pro-am DSLRs and post production software make photography increasingly accessible, photographer Richard Mosse seems set on making his life more difficult. Armed with dead-stock Kodak infrared film—originally developed to detect camouflage for military aerial surveillance—Mosse ventured into the heart of the Congo to take some pictures. The forty-year-old technology was a cumbersome addition to his rural exploration, with Mosse playing the role of a time-traveling photographer under the hood of his camera. Consciously drawing from the photojournalistic tradition, Mosse’s collection “Infra,” on display at NYC’s Jack Shainman Gallery through 23 December, is a revisitation of familiar themes. He plays a dangerous game, trying to imbue life into themes so commonplace that viewers have become apathetic. The result is a new meditation on the problematic genre of photojournalism in regions plagued by conflict, one that uses art to decontextualize the familiar.
The obvious narrative is simple. Hardened rebels stand among expanses of eye-popping magenta, a comic irony that contradicts the gravity of war. Mosse is using a discontinued technology to revisit an old yet ongoing problem, creating a dialogue between the generations of inhabitants affected by war and the omnipresent lens of western civilization. “Infra” forces the viewer to look with fresh eyes at images to which they have become blind. This experience holds true not only for viewers, but for Mosse as well. Without the perspective of his camera’s infrared film, Mosse experienced his subjects for the first time during development.
Beyond the political ramifications of his work, Mosse’s images are compositionally stunning. His ability to find geometry in figures and landscapes is especially apparent in infrared, where the contours of trails and human limbs soberly interrupt the mass of color. While child soldiers supply the initial interest, Mosse’s landscapes are the surprise pleasure of the exhibition. Vegetation gives off a high amount of infrared light, which makes the Congo’s lush terrain a particularly gorgeous subject for Mosse’s lens. A stunning 3×3 series showcases the fragile structures of the Congo, lending valuable insight into village life.
The project marks an ongoing fixation for Mosse and next year the photographer will return to document the texture of the Congolese topography. To catch his current work, check out the exhibition at Jack Shainman, on display through 23 December 2011. A monograph of Infra is also available from Aperture for $80.
Images courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, NY.
Ethereal landscapes and moody figurative scenes in Peter Doig’s comprehensive new monograph
Best known for melancholy and dreamlike renditions of bucolic landscapes, Scottish artist Peter Doig has become one of the most internationally-celebrated painters of his generation. The distinction is all the more striking for a modern artist given such ordinary-seeming subjects and his chosen medium—painterly figurative work initially put him on the global stage in the ’90s.
In a new slipcased monograph of the Turner Prize-winner’s work, publisher Rizzoli offers the most up-to-date and comprehensive collection of paintings and illustrations spanning Doig’s career. The 400 pages include found photographs of unidentified figures and settings that have informed his oeuvre as much as his own surroundings. Though he’s lived in Trinidad since moving there as a child with his family, that environment and other source material serves as starting point for paintings that have more to do with memory and subjectivity than true-to-life depictions.
Snowy, tree-filled scenes—sometimes dotted with a lone figure—account for much of the artist’s subject matter. But blurry cabins and solitary, water-drifting canoes (including Doig’s record-breaking “White Canoe,” which sold at auction for $11.3 million in 2007) also feature prominently among the book’s 350 images, each one eerie and hypnotic in its own way.
With the exception of supplemental essays by art critic Richard Shiff and Catherine Lampert, an art writer and curator, the book’s layout is a clean one, comprising just one illustration per page. The design lends a powerful effect to the overall collection, allowing viewers to get lost in one painting at a time.
Doig’s monograph is currently available for pre-order from Amazon or Powell’s, while the official publication release date is scheduled for 11 October 2011.
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