Hasta La Ideas

NYC’s supper clubs offer an impromptu dining cart serving up a six course meal in the subway

In a theatrical culinary feat, passengers aboard NYC’s L train were recently treated to a six-course lunch as they rolled across Manhattan, under the East River and into Williamsburg, each stop adding to the food frenzy. Cooked up by the crafty chefs behind A Razor, A Shiny Knife, the luncheon included an elegant array of dishes, including foie gras and filet mignon, as well as a pyramid of chocolate panna cotta, dusted with gold leaf. Guests—who paid $100 for a reservation—were given no information apart from “the promise of a clandestine dining experience.”

Michael J. Cirino and Daniel Castaño began A Razor, A Shiny Knife several years ago with an interest in experimental cooking, determined to create new ways for “people to interact with food and each other.” Hosting the luncheon on the L train is just one example of how the team challenges themselves with gastronomic adventures, with timing and execution at the crux of the daunting task. The challenge that put the duo the map though was their 20-course recreation of the $1,500 dinners Grant Achatz and Thomas Keller were serving at their restaurants, which they executed for $300 a meal with the help of A Razor, A Shiny Knife “PHD/Cook” Andrew Rosenberg and “Self-Appointed Master Sommelier” Jonny Cigar.

The ingenious event was also aided by Studiofeast‘s Mike Lee, who brought the entree on board at the Morgan Avenue stop. With more than 50 people involved, the group effort really demonstrated the power of a well-planned idea.

via The New York Times, pictures by Yana Paskova for The New York Times

A young minimalist takes on the challenge of designing for everyday life

A kind of Shaker simplicity marks the work of Leon Ransmeier, a beauty that results when an object is exactly what it’s meant to be and nothing more. A humidifier is a pristine bucket filled with water; an extension cord wraps itself neatly around a flat white spool.

Some designs are, in fact, so pure of purpose that they can stump those of us surrounded by less thoughtful objects. When we asked if it was possible to get money out of bubble piggy bank—little more than a clear globe with a slot in it—without smashing the whole thing to bits, Ransmeier reminded us, “They were designed to save money, not spend it.”

In spite of being a fresh 31-years-old, Ransmeier has already had a long time to consider form and purpose. His father is a ceramicist, and the young Ransmeier spent his childhood in a studio watching clay morph from paste to art, while learning how to make objects on his own. Focused on furniture design, after graduating from RISD in 2001, Ransmeier moved to the Netherlands with design partner and former girlfriend Gwendolyn Floyd.

In Eindhoven he founded Ransmeier Inc., but it was only after he and Floyd moved to Rotterdam and started Ransmeier & Floyd in 2005 that they began attracting serious interest. A dishwasher rack comprised of pliable polypropylene nubs, arranged algorithmically in density to hold spoons, knives and plates, was included in the 2006 National Design Triennial at the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. They created products for Droog among many others.

“I was influenced and inspired by the Dutch approach to design that emerged in the 1990s, and I still believe that this devious and conceptual approach to design is an important chapter in history,” said Ransmeier, referring to that definitively quirky, minimalist concept still on display at internationally renowned design stores like Moooi. He was lured back to NYC after a providential set of circumstances—”My visa was long expired”—and the offer of the creative directorship of design firm DBA, a firm he founded with partners Erik Wysocan and Patrick Sarkissian.

The term “DBA” is meant in the legal sense, as a placeholder for the greater number of hats that each member of the company wears—not only that of a designer, but that of environmentalists and civically-minded individuals. One of DBA’s current products, the 98 Pen, is a simple black roller ball made at a wind-powered facility; another, the Endless Notebook, is 100% post-consumer waste, comprised of folded booklets slipped into a slim envelope. Perhaps a compostable pen seems like a relatively small tweak—still, taking into account the many toxic, plastic ones strewn across desks all over the United States, it might make more of a difference than you’d think.

“The issue with a lot of ‘sustainable design’ is that the focus is predominantly on the sustainability of the product without a strong focus on innovation or creating timeless, beautiful objects,” Ransmeier said. Utility, beauty and sustainability aren’t mutually exclusive goals, and focusing on one goal above the others is to the detriment of them all. “Creating objects that can be immediately dated as being a part of the ‘sustainability trend’ quickly makes them obsolete and inherently unsustainable.”

In addition to designing, Ransmeier now takes time to teach—”At the moment I’m finishing up a semester at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, teaching an undergraduate industrial design class”—occasionally commuting from his NYC home to do so. “It’s important to realize that industry and the man-made environment are not separate from what people perceive as ‘nature’, but are interdependent and inherently connected,” he continued. And simply and beautifully so, if Ransmeier had his way.

The Audi Icons series, inspired by the all-new Audi A7, showcases 16 leading figures united by their dedication to innovation and design.

Brooklyn naval history in a furniture line upcycled from local materials

After launching a furniture series made out of wood reclaimed from Coney Island’s boardwalk in 2010, Brooklyn design studio Uhuru takes up the concept again with their second “local materials” collection, this time using deck wood from the USS North Carolina—the most decorated U.S. battleship of WWII. Like the whimsical lines of the amusement park-inspired line, the War Craft Collection takes its design cues from its source material with clean, industrial lines and a nod to history.

Originally built during the ’30s in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the boat was the first new battleship to arrive in the Pacific and participated in every major naval offensive in that theater. The design of the table directly addresses the “inherently violent nature of modern warcraft,” modeled as it is after the 16-inch guns on the ship, a significantly larger barrel hole which represents an increase in response to concerns about Japan’s caliber limit.

The five other pieces in the “War Craft Collection” (each each limited to a run of ten due to the limited quantity of wood) will be on view 13-16 May 2011 at Noho Design District’s pop up in The American Design Building at Great Jones Lumber (45 Great Jones Street, New York, NY 10012).

Moody sculptural paintings by an emerging NYC artist

Stark yet colorful works that fall somewhere between painting and sculpture, NYC-based artist Eli Ping’s practice is a study of unexpected tension in form, subject and tone. Ping says he’s “ultimately interested in materials and process, and accomplishing a form that conveys energetic resonance to the viewer,” a feat accomplished by keeping spontaneity alive in otherwise highly-considered compositions.

This ruminative approach to art-making shows up in his current solo exhibition at NYC’s Susan Inglett Gallery, but also signals a shift. Where he previously worked heavily with resins, Ping found that their toxicity was a “major impediment to accomplishing intimacy” with his materials and switched to applying paint-soaked cotton to canvas.

The resulting fluid shapes have a sense of order without appearing overly worked—a tipping point for Ping. If a piece becomes too “fussy,” he will often flip it over or turn it upside down, a technique borrowed from Impressionism. Ping explains, “they would often paint over an entire area, some people would say that is a waste of energy but even if it’s not visible, it still informs the work.”

A painting resembling a classic Rorschach test clearly illustrates Ping’s labor between intention and impulse. While symmetry abounds, he likens the unbalanced composition’s structure to that of nature. Repetition develops organically without feeling forced, the result of a process that, like contemporaries such as designer Maarten Baas, lets ideas evolve over time.

A photo of a church steeple shot through a drinking glass several years ago, now appears as a “stretched from the top” form in some of his sculptural pieces. Ping stresses that he doesn’t set out to replicate what he sees, adding “I have a sense of what qualities I aspire to, usually in response to a feeling of lack in a previous piece. Any pre-envisioning doesn’t go farther than that.”

Looking to the future however, Ping says his work will fall more in line with his simplified lifestyle. Moving forward he will create pieces that, unlike his current complex and often quite fragile works, need not “to be handled with kid gloves” and can instead become a part of a person’s life, rather than just hung on a wall.

Eli Ping’s third solo exhibition runs through 4 June 2011 at Susan Inglett Gallery.

Le réalisateur américain Evan Owen Dennis présente dans cette vidéo le salon de “New York Adorned” en mettant l’accent sur ​​l’art de tatouage. Présenté comme une réelle forme d’art, ce court-métrage en noir et blanc est à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.

Previously on Fubiz

• The Rhythm of Spacetime
• Autour Series
• New York by Gehry

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