Hasta La Ideas

Quebec culls its most innovative designs for an NYC exhibition and shop

Taking up residence in NYC, the three-week-long exhibit “From Quebec” highlights over 70 innovative designs from our friends to the north. From furniture to fashion, the artfully edited collection showcases the concept Canadians master so well—blending traditional craft with modern ideas.

With works spanning both emerging and established designers, standouts include Périphère‘s “Pâté Chinois” shelving, M3beton‘s “Coulee dans le Beton” collection and Zoë Mowat Design‘s “Desk Buddy.” Also included is a preview of CH contributor Mike Giles’ wooden cased “Alba Me” alarm clock for Furni Creations, which will hit design stores November 2010 (shown at top).

An exhibit-and-shop-in-one, limited quantities of most designs are available for purchase, making it easier than ever to take home furniture from Kino Guérin and Olivier Desrochers, or more precious items like ceramic homewares from Porcelaines Bousquet and tiny chair pendants from Bruxe Design.

“From Quebec” runs through 22 October 2010 at NoHo’s concept shop Relative Space.

Dezeen promotion: Dezeen is media partner for SuperDesign, an exhibition hosting international designers and galleries in London during the Frieze Art Fair next week from 14-17 October.

Top: Reverb Wire Chair by Brodie Neill for The Apartment Gallery.  Above: Industry Table by Studio Job for Mitterrand+Cramer

The exhibition, which takes place at Victoria House on Bloomsbury Square, features work by designers including Tom Dixon, Michael Young and the Campana Brothers and galleries including The Apartment, Mitterand+Cramer and Vessel, plus our Dezeen Watch Store pop-up.

Above: Tom Dixon Cast Corti Candle Holder Rouge for Mitterrand+Cramer

The public view will take place from 10:00 to 20:00 on Friday 15 October, 10:00 to 18:00 on Saturday 16 October, and 10:00 to 16:00 on Sunday 17 October.

Here’s some text from SuperDesign:

SUPER DESIGN 2010

LONDON’S PREMIER DESIGN ART EXHIBITION RETURNS WITH A POWERFUL LINE-UP OF INTERNATIONAL GALLERIES HELD DURING THE FRIEZE ART FAIR

14 – 17 October 2010
Victoria House Bloomsbury Square London WC1 B4DA
Open daily: Free Entry

Now in its fourth year, Super Design has cemented its reputation as London’s most important and innovative exhibition of contemporary design art. Set within the imposing venue of Victoria House, the exhibition will bring together collections from leading international galleries and pioneering designers at a crucial time in the art calendar year.

Above: Issey Miyake Trapezoid watch at Dezeen Watch Store.

Spread over 1,500 sqm of exhibition space, Super Design will feature specially commissioned, unique and limited edition pieces from world-class international galleries including The Apartment, D&A-Lab, Quadrige, Mitterrand-Cramer, Tom Dixon, Herve Van Der Straeten and Vessel Gallery among others.

Above: Tom Dixon Flamecut series chaise

Devised by gallery owner Patrick Brillet, Super Design is a carefully curated event designed to showcase the ingenious capabilities of producers and designers and the inspiring collaborations that exist between the two.

At this year’s Super Design, The Apartment will be premiering two new chandeliers from the lighting series ‘Digit’, developed by Milan based designer Emmanuel Babled. Working with Murano glass and creating extremely dense and chaotic configurations of orbs, Babled breaks free from the conventions of the classic Venetian chandelier with his latest works ‘Digit Superball’ and ‘Digit Linear’.

Above: Philip Michael Wolfson Origami Chair for The Apartment Gallery

The Apartment will also be launching Michael Young’s new ‘Newspaper Shade’, inspired by his walks through Hong-Kong where he discovered an old paper folding technique which he developed and evolved to create stable forms and structures.

‘Newspaper Shade’ is made from around 10,000 bits of old Chinese newspaper and is the largest item produced using this technique. Also being debuted is Young’s ‘Carbonlite’ floor lamp, inspired by his love of Japanese hanging lights.

New work from Australian designer Brodie Neill will be presented by The Apartment including the seductive ‘Threefold’ light, a never ending aluminium surface in the form of a Mobius strip, radiating soft light from its striking sculptural centerpiece. A re-inter- pretation of Neill’s original solid surfaced ‘Reverb Chair’ will also be on display. This wire frame version, the ‘Reverb Wire Chair,’ amplifies the original’s vortex feel while mirror polished stainless steel rods map the expanding geometry of the overall conical form.

Above: Michael Young for The Apartment

The Apartment will showcase the Origami Mirror Chair (welded & folded mirror stain- less steel) by Philip Michael Wolfson in a new variation of his early works from the Origami series. Wolfson examines the abstraction of penetration, folding, layering and juxtaposition, creating a collision of static versus dynamic forces. The use of mirror finish steel multiplies the characteristics of the Origami Chair thru amplifying both the movement within the piece itself, as well as the surrounding environment.

The Apartment will debut Plug Light by Marcus Tremonto, inspired by French Pop comics of the 60’s. By manipulating and exaggerating size and form, the work forces the viewer to re-examine, question and consider the surroundings in which it exists, reminiscent of a cell in a comic or frame that tells a story.

Above: Maarteen Baas Secretaire Grey Derivations for Mitterrand Cramer

Geneva based gallery Mitterrand-Cramer, will be exhibiting new pieces from ‘Grey Derivations’, the latest furniture collection from rising global talent, Maarten Bass. Evincing the highest quality craftsmanship, the trademark of this Dutch designer, each piece is made of grey- and red-pigmented resin fixed on a steel frame.

Mitterand-Cramer will debut Paris designer Arik Levy’s luminous new ‘Facet Moon Table’ and pieces from his ‘Abstraction’ sculpture series and the startling ‘Wireflow’ black random light. Furniture from Rotterdam’s multi-disciplinary Studio Makkink and Bey including ‘Kade Chair 1’, ‘de Amersfoot’ chair and ‘Bonsai’ table will be exhibited. Swiss pop artist Sylvie Fleury’s series ‘Miniland-Untitled’ will also be showcased.

Above: Jonathan Monk for D&A Lab

Internationally renowned British designer Tom Dixon will present the Flamecut series, an installation of unfeasibly heavyweight furniture cut from 1inch thick steel using the traditional process of flame cutting. The Cast series, a collection of abstract forms made from aluminium sand casting, and finished with a bright enamel coating will also be shown.

Herve Van der Straeten will present a collection of one-off and limited edition pieces underlining the designer’s explorative approach. The Console collection (including pyschose, kasimir, piercing and cristalloide) a geometric explosion of overlapping cubes will form part of the display. The combination of balanced forms seemingly defies gravity creating the illusion of unattainable stability.

Creative pioneers D&A Lab, will be exhibiting ‘The Low Table 1984’, a new piece from British artist Jonathan Monk, part of its 2010 Designed by Artists Collection: Relative Objects, which challenges contemporary artists to translate their aesthetic vision into functional pieces of design.

Above: Jonathan Monk for D&A Lab (2)

Monk’s piece was inspired by renowned artist Donald Judd’s iconic metal ‘Bookshelf’ created in 1984. Monk’s reinterpretation was made by laying the bookshelf on the floor, rearranging the individual elements into a low table. The multi- coloured piece uses the same RAL colour palette in which the original bookshelf was made.

At Super Design Vessel Gallery will launch a series of lighting projects from both internationally acclaimed artists – Olgoj Chorchoj to new talents such as Marco Dessi. Each project is produced in a limited edition, focusing on the craftmanship and quality of the work.

In contrast to the lighting Vessel will also showcase a selection of artglass from the greatest artists collaborations they have shown in the last ten years, featuring artists such as Lena Begstrom, Baldwin and Guggisberg, Rony Plesl and Katy Holford.

Above: Esperancaby Campana Brothers for Vessel Gallery

Super Design seeks to emphasise the current synergy between design and the visual arts with innovative and ground breaking displays that present modern design in a fresh and invigorating light, in an inspiring location at the heart of the capital.

Visit www.superdesign-london.com for more information

Notes to editor

Patrick Brillet opened his first gallery in London, dedicated to post-war design, in the early eighties. Since then he has curated private and public museum collections throughout the world, acting as a design consultant to a number of major auction houses.

Above: 387 consolecristalloide by Herve Van Der Straeten

In recent years he has commissioned and produced studio pieces with both established and up-and-coming 21st century designers. In December 2005, he formed The Apart- ment gallery in partnership with Isabelle May. They now work with some of the world’s most renowned designers including Emmanuel Babled, Johanna Grawunder, Brodie Neil, Ross Lovegrove, Marcus Tremonto, Philip Michael Wolfson, Michael Young among others producing stunning and stimulating work and carries an extensive collec- tion of pieces by design luminaries including Ron Arad, Marc Newson, the Campana Brothers, Ettore Sottsass.

The Apartment Gallery Set within an intimate living space, The Apartment is a private gallery showcasing pieces by leading designers and select contemporary of both established and emerging talent, where collectors can buy quietly and privately in situ.

Above: 367 Consolekasimir Herve Van DerStraeten

Emerging photographers take on death and tourism in a London show

Exploring the paradoxical mix of fear and seduction that travel increasingly presents, “Dead On Holiday” is a series of seven striking images depicting dead girls shot by budding photographers Tess Thackara and Andrea DiCenzo on a recent trip to Turkey.

The project underscores the mismatched emotions of exploring new places, playing off the artificiality of typical vacation photos by using anonymous models in locations that could be almost anywhere. The saturated Kodachrome-esque hues work similarly in contrast to the dark subject matter, suggesting that when removed from the familiar, a “traveler dies a small death of identity,” as Thackara explains.

While shooting the series on the tranquil island in the Sea of Marmara, Thackara and DiCenzo found that the locals weren’t at all interested in the false deaths they were creating, allowing them to fully immerse themselves in each location and truly speak to their imagined experience of the space.

Their first collaborative show, “Dead On Holiday” opens at The City Arts and Music Project, London’s multi-functional cafe, bar and gallery space in Shoreditch on 7 October 2010 and runs through 21 October 2010.

From runways to galleries, the philosophical needlework of a rising Italian artist

Aldo Lanzini‘s beautifully alarming crochet masks most recently made an appearance at Missoni’s Spring/Summer 2011 fashion show when the 30 ushers wore them to seat people. While the riotous colors and fantastical faces make compliment the Italian label’s renowned knitwear well, their bold expressions and strange forms of the maskes are a spectacle of their own.

Splitting his time between Milan and NYC for the past 15 years, Lanzini has been quietly building a large army of loud characters with his expressive needlework, explaining to Vogue Italia that his pieces are “the condition of contemporary man, some kind of conscious schizophrenia.”

Lanzini’s work can currently be seen at Milan’s Le Case D’Arte, where he transformed the gallery into visceral experience that amplifies the senses through visual, sonorous, tactile and olfactory elements. Dubbed “The Drop,” the exhibition speaks to Lanzini’s constant investigation of how the process of creation affects the everyday life and is on view through 11 December 2010.

Emerging London talent Richie Culver’s poignant collage work

Master of manipulation Richie Culver, with his arsenal of old photos and sharp-witted text, creates artwork with the one-two punch of a compelling soundbite that probes into both famous and more intimate historical moments. While the works function as pop homages too, his piece “Have You Ever Really Loved Anyone?”—an iconic image of Jesse Owens with those words plastered across—was the highlight of the May 2010 group show at the Tate Modern and suggests the dual forces at play.

Culver, who had rockstar dreams of his own, turns his song titles and lyrics into paintings and collage, a selection of which is currently on view in his debut solo show “Borstal Spots & Polka Dots.”

Also included in the exhibit are a smattering of Culver’s own photographs he’s taken over the years. The black-and-white collection is not too different from his textual works though, with each perfectly composed image functioning as one sentence from a much larger conversation.

A majority of his work seemingly revolves around love and relationships—a concept clearly demonstrated in the painting “I Loved You, You Just Couldn’t See It” but also in collage form. An image of a nun states “One fuck and she was anybody’s,” while the picture of a bride reads “aware of the ways of men.” Culver titles an alarming photo of a pouty-lipped woman with scars up her arm simply, “A love story.”

With a show dedicated solely to his personal photos planned for late 2010 and a cover shot for the forthcoming I Blame Coco album Constant hitting shelves soon, Culver continues to explore concepts that speak to his roots.

Reviewed on Le Cool as “A small, but moving show,” Culver’s “Borstal Spots & Polka Dots” runs through 26 September at London’s West 11 Gallery.