Hasta La Ideas

An exhibition of furniture by American designer Jonah Takagi will be on show at Civilian Art Projects gallery in Washington  next month.

Top: Leafy Green Stool. Inspired by milking stools the world over, standing tall in maple socks. Maple, Milk Paint
Above: American Gothic Table. Tinker Toys, Windsor chairs and wayward Puritans. Maple, Medex, Black Lacquer

Entitled Jonah Takagi: New American Designer, the show has been organised by Apartment Zero and includes stools, tables and lighting by the Tokyo-born designer.

Above: Bluff City Lights. As close as I’ve been to Memphis. Enameled steel cage, copper socket and enameled aluminum diffusor.

The show will be open 10 December 2010 to 8 January 2011.

Above: Porcelain Pendant. Porcelain, Cloth Wire, Electrics

The information that follows is from Apartment Zero:

Celebrating 11 years of introducing the best of industrial design innovation by collaborating with area embassies, museums, universities and product designers, Apartment Zero is proud to partner with Civilian Art Projects to present the work of Jonah Takagi, a new American designer whose work has been awarded, exhibited and featured worldwide. Please join us for the press preview December 9th from 7-9pm following the week of Art Basel/Design Miami for the fascinating work of an up-and-coming young product-based designer.

Above: F/K/A Table Lamp. Bases and shades and cords. Aluminum, Steel, Enamel

Jonah Takagi: New American Designer

Born in Tokyo and raised in Connecticut, Jonah received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2002. After graduating, Jonah lived in Portland, Oregon and worked for a cabinet maker before relocating to Washington, DC. In Washington, he designed and built sets and props for theater, film and television while helping to develop “Pancake Mountain”, a kid’s music television show. For the next few years, Jonah designed furniture that he built in a friend’s studio while playing bass guitar, touring and recording with several indie rock bands. Needing to develop and showcase a growing body of work that few had seen, Jonah founded Atelier Takagi in 2005.

Atelier Takagi represents the functional and aesthetic ideals of artist and designer Jonah Takagi. Conceived as an outlet for an overactive imagination, AtelierTakagi is a multi-disciplinary design studio and workshop producing objects that require closer examination, that inspire and inform and re-contextualize our surroundings.

Above: Stepping Stool. For my mother. Red Oak

Apartment Zero

Over the past 11 years, Apartment Zero has presented the Washington DC market with the very best in emerging and established industrial design talents, as well as produced design symposiums, travelling exhibits and embassy and museum collaborations . They have partnered with the Smithsonian Associates, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, The Phillips Collection, Hillwood Museum, The National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Hirshhorn Museum as well as the Embassies of the Netherlands, Spain, Canada, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Australia. Apartment Zero has joined forces with the AIA and the IDSA and well as Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and the Cooper-Hewitt. Some of the designers presented have been Marcel Wanders, Karim Rashid, James Dyson, Martin Azua and Constantin and Laurene Boym, to name a few. Apartment Zero has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Elle Decor, Surface, Wallpaper, Dwell, Details, Metropolis, Interior Design, Food&Wine, GQ, Azure, Abitare, Home and Design, DC Modern Luxury, The Chicago Tribune, InStyle, House Beautiful, Lucky, USA Today and Washingtonian, among others.

Above: Simple Machines. Fasteners and components in harmony. A system of legs and surfaces. Clean and deliberate, detail and ornament derived from a simple machine. White Oak

Civilian Art Projects

Civilian Art Projects is a premier gallery in Washington, DC representing emerging and established artists. Civilian presents a challenging exhibition series supporting artists working in a broad range of media including painting, photography, sculpture, works on paper, and other emerging forms. Civilian will be participating in Scope Miami this year.

See also:

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Furniture by Paul Loebach	Furniture by Another Country	Furniture by Raw Edges

Conceptual artist Roy McMakin’s funny furniture gets a hometown show

Roy McMakin‘s furniture designs aren’t the first to take on conventional assumptions about the distinctions between art and objects. As a trained architect, it’s not surprising that the interdisciplinary artist’s skillful manipulation of details rivals that of a legend like Ettore Sottsass. But where Sottsass used his painstakingly deliberate compositions to playfully reinvent ideas about what furniture can be, McMakin’s studied work makes wry observations about what furniture is. As the press release for his current show “Five Chairs & Ten Tables” puts it, McMakin’s absurdist work “emphasize[s] the sculptural quality of utilitarian objects, resulting in works both awkward and irreverent, exuding a presence simultaneously monastic and mischievous.”

This new exhibit sees the Seattle-based artist (he was born in the rural town of Lander, Wyoming) showing in his adopted city at Ambach & Rice. With an installation that consists of a series of furniture mismatched in shape and appearing slightly unfinished or off—cushions are askew, tabletops pitch too far over their pedestals—the work introduces a tension between notions of art and commerce. Here, the chairs and tables perform as “actors suspicious of the role in which they were cast.”

For more of McMakin’s explorations of emotion, scale, craft and function to explore how objects contain meaning, see Rizzoli’s retrospective book “When Is A Chair Not A Chair,” which includes almost all of his prolific output over the past 25 years. As McMakin explains it, “I see the job of an artist as that of a philosopher of visual experience.”

“Five Chairs & Ten Tables” is currently on view through 5 December 2010 at Ambach & Rice. See more images of the exhibit in the gallery below.

New York design office Leong Leong has completed a temporary, foam-covered concept store for menswear designer Siki Im in New York.

Located at 504 24th Street, the Siki Im x Leong Leong Concept Store runs from 5-15 November as part of Building Fashion, a series of collaborations between fashion designers and architects.

The store, which features a ramp-like sloping floor, is built around an existing structure that was formerly used as the sales office for the HL23 apartment building by architect Neil Denari.

Both the interior and exterior are coated in textured soy-based foam.

Building Fashion is hosted by BOFFO and Spilios Gianakopoulos, with Pin-up Magazine and Project No. 8. It pairs fashion designers with architects to explore the intersection of both fields.

Photographs are by David Smith unless otherwise stated.

Above photograph is by Pete Deevakul.

The following information is from the designers:

SIKI IM X LEONG LEONG CONCEPT STORE

Announcing the opening of the Siki Im x LEONG LEONG concept store completed as the final installation of Building Fashion at HL23 presented by BOFFO and Spilios Gianakopolous with PIN-UP Magazine and PROJECT No. 8.

Above photograph is by Pete Deevakul.

The concept store, developed in collaboration with fashion designer Siki Im, is the latest in a series of projects by LEONG LEONG that explore the transformation of a existing space through the insertion of a foreign figure or shape.

The structure, which is the former sales trailer for the HL23 building designed by Neil Denari, is filled end to end with large ramp-form that creates an unexpected gathering space with undefined programmatic possibilities.

Soy-based spray foam is used to cover the interior and exterior of the structure creating a supple surface for inhabitation on which visitors are required to remove their shoes.

Small niches and ledges are carved into the foam to create areas for display and seating.

Above photograph is by Pete Deevakul.

The clothes are embedded beneath the ramp on either end, encouraging visitors to explore the extents of the space and experience the clothes in very intimate environments.

About the firm
LEONG LEONG is an architecture firm based in New York City founded by brothers Dominic and Chris Leong.

Their work includes the highly publicized 3.1 Phillip Lim stores in Seoul and Los Angeles, the renovation of the 3.1 Phillip Lim flagship in New York, and the Opening Ceremony boutique at the Ace Hotel in New York.

Most recently LEONG LEONG was selected as a winner of the New Practices 2010 Competition by the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. This award rec- ognizes the new generation of emerging architects in New York City.

Above photograph is by Pete Deevakul.

Above photograph is by Pete Deevakul.

Above photograph is by Pete Deevakul.

Above photograph is by Pete Deevakul.

Above photograph is by Pete Deevakul.

See also:

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3.1 Phillip Lim Seoul Flagship by Leong Leong	Built to Wear by Ball-Nogues Studio	Galerie BSL by Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance

Candice Lin’s sculptural illusions and videos taking on racial and gender inequalities

Artist Candice Lin‘s new exhibit “Holograms” uses video and sculpture to challenge the distribution of power among races and genders, exploring the concept of authentic identity.

In her ceramic sculpture “The Moon,” Lin challenges understandings of feminine interiority by requiring audiences to peer through the vulva of a truncated female form in order to watch the animated loop inside. Dubbed “Inside Out,” the animation addresses the old Madonna-vs.-whore cliché.

The exhibit’s namesake, “Holograms,” a twenty-minute video projection montage of found footage and animations, likens identity to a holographic image. Attempting to embody that which can’t be categorized, the ambiguous work incorporates optical illusions, hypnosis and visual contradictions, all to thwart any image of authentic identity.

“Holograms” runs 6 November through 11 December 2010 at L.A.’s Francois Ghebaly Gallery .

Looks from the Tokyo Fashion Festa, presented at the Fashion Institute of Technology in advance of the “Japan Fashion Now” exhibition, on view through April 2, 2011 at the Museum at FIT (Photos: UnBeige)

Whether you can distinguish a Shibuya denizen from an Akihabara type at 40 paces or still can’t quite get your head around those wide-eyed manga cuties, you’ll be fascinated by the proceedings of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Japan Fashion Now Symposium. The two-day confab, which takes place tomorrow and Friday at FIT, will delve into the astonishingly diverse sartorial world featured in the museum’s current exhibition exploring the evolution of contemporary Japanese fashion from Rei Kawakubo and the avant-garde gang to gothic-punk-Lolita styles and Cosplay. “Japan continues to be on the cutting-edge—maybe even the bleeding edge—of fashion,” says Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at FIT and curator of the exhibition. “Some of the most interesting designers—including menswear designers—combine avant-garde and sub-cultural styles. Equally significant is the Japanese obsession (not too strong a word) with perfecting classic utilitarian garments, such as jeans and work wear.” Symposium attendees will settle in a series of presentations and conversations that focus on everything from the Tokyo shopping scene (in a talk by Tiffany Godoy) and Japanese men’s fashion magazines (Masafumi Monden) to the “perverse cuteness in JapaneseGirl culture” (Laura Miller) and artist Yoshitomo Nara (Miwako Tezuka). Pre-registration for the symposium is now closed, but our friends at FIT assure us that you can sign up on-site.

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