Hasta La Ideas

For the month of May, Toronto’s Studio Gallery presents the work of world-renowned artist Richard Kern with his first solo exhibition in Canada and his first full-career retrospective, “Kern: A Retrospective Exhibition Featuring the Photography and Films of Richard Kern.”

Kern, a photographer, occasional pornographer, former filmmaker and video director, is most importantly a portrait artist. The retrospective documents his works over the past two decades, from his early short films to photographs from the ’90s, which illuminate the early stages of his voyeuristic style of photography.

Kern has published nine books to date and regularly contributes to a variety of international publications such as Purple, Vice, V Magazine and Italian GQ. His work has been featured in numerous books and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of Art and in more than 30 solo shows around the world.

The show runs through 30 May 2010. In addition to the print works, Studio Gallery will screen films by Kern 15 May and 22 May 2010. The $5 admission includes the full exhibition and curator introduction and runs 7pm – 10pm.

Better known as Ramblin Worker, San Francisco-based artist Steve MacDonald combines sewing and embroidery with tech-savvy techniques to come up with his colorful illustrations, currently showing at NYC’s Fuse Gallery.

“The Last Dragon” skews towards MacDonald’s interest in pop culture, layering colors and images to play off CMYK printing processes. The graphics, comprised of cut-outs and thread, show off how MacDonald uses a sewing machine as others might wield a spray can or a paint brush.

MacDonald explains, the show “is a little of everything, from simple clean sewn lines to crazy cityscapes.” But, skateboarding makes a strong thematic statement, taking up a wall in the exhibit with pieces like the artist’s skate-ramp alphabet, as well as several other works featuring the curving form of a ramp.

Previously featured on CH for his Modest Mouse concert tees, his involvement with the annual Bike Film Festival, and his embroidered cuckoo clocks, who knows what MacDonald will come up with next.

“The Last Dragon” runs through 15 May 2010.

Showcasing over 70 international designers, the current exhibit “Post Fossil: Excavating 21st Century Creation” at Tokyo museum 21_21 Design Sight is the upshot of esteemed Dutch trend forecaster Lidewij Edelkoort‘s examination of the future of design in all of its constituent parts. The content spans techniques, shapes, materials, colors and themes with 140 pieces demonstrating a new way of thinking—using the past to reinvent the future.

The exhibition includes an array of resourcefully creative works, many fusing nature with design like Atelier NL’s “Drawn From Clay” pottery, Joris Laarman’s “Bone Chair” and Peter Marigold‘s man-made chess board. Each artist answers serious questions about meaningful consumption, how to break free of old paradigms and whether less really is more.

Edelkoort selected designers who defy the trend of designing for design’s sake and instead create with “unfettered freedom” as they search for new methods and, arguably more importantly, new tools to design with.

Referencing the Arte Povera movement of the ’60s, Edelkoort predicts the ideas will see a resurgence due to shifts in economics and thinking about sustainability. Tokyo’s 21_21 Design Sight makes the perfect venue to showcase these works as a museum focused on generating design that “sees clearly what is ahead.”

“Post Fossil: Excavating 21st Century Creation” runs through 27 June 2010, check out Tokyo Art Beat for full details.

Now showing at the Vienna Furniture Museum, The Ikea Phenomenon takes a look at the international lifestyle brand’s design evolution from the 1950s to the present. The show, considered through the lens of design history (and reinforcing Ikea‘s knack for mirroring current styles), includes approximately 100 examples of the brand’s furniture displayed alongside 30 examples of Scandinavian and international designers that have inspired Ikea over the years. At various stations, mini-exhibits illustrate core concepts like Scandinavian Modern, flat-pack, modular furniture and sustainability.

In addition to the expansive furniture display, the Ikea Phenomenon includes a section dedicated to “Ikea Pimps and Hacks,” creative lighting transformations inspired by and/or incorporating existing Ikea elements. Also on exhibit, a pair of rooms exemplify Ikea’s ongoing modernity—one a mockup of an “average” Austrian living room, markedly shabby and boring; the other composed of the most popular selling Ikea wares, channeling Dwell-like style.

The exhibit itself, designed by the always-fun Austrian design firm Walking Chair, features a weaving, amorphous-looking yellow display structure, upon which many of the furniture pieces sit, reinforcing Ikea’s playful but functional identity.

And while design is clearly the focus, the show also pays homage to Ikea’s development from a one-man shop to its present international success. Founded in 1943 by a then 17-year-old Ingvar Kamprad, the Ikea name is an acronym combining his initials, the first letter of his father’s farm (Elmtaryd) and his Swedish hometown, Agunnaryd. Originally selling stationary, stockings and other everyday items, only adding furniture to the lineup in 1948, Ikea’s major business expansion began in the 1970s.

The point Phenomenon drives home throughout is Ikea’s longstanding dedication to quality design for all. From Scandinavia to the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to Vienna, the company’;s influence on lifestyle across the globe through mass-produced, well-designed and affordable pieces—the kind we don’t feel guilty about replacing every few years—is (quite unlike its furniture) one-of-a-kind.

The Ikea Phenomenon runs through 11 July 2010.

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