Galerie BSL (opens in new tab)
Among our picks of what to see at Design Miami this year is the stand of Paris' Galerie BSL, which is bringing along new works by David Adjaye, Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance, Taher Chemirik and Charles Kalpakian. The gallery describes the cabinets by Kalpakian (pictured), a French Lebanese designer, as ‘functional paintings’.
Location: main fair at Design Miami
Design Miami (opens in new tab) is now back in rude health, after the inevitable late-noughties wobble. The shift to South Beach and closer ties to Art Basel/Miami (opens in new tab) have helped the revival. As has a much stronger showing from domestic galleries, further proof that the American design scene is well out of it’s long stretch in the doldrums. And the exhibition organisers are determined to maintain the upward momentum.
This week’s show will be held in a pop-up pavilion, designed by New York multi-disciplinary darlings Snarkitecture (opens in new tab), next to the Miami Beach Convention Centre. 'Drift', as the Pavilion has been called, is a striking cluster of inflatable tubes carefully lifted and arranged to create a walk in topographical model.
Snarkitecture are also appearing inside the pavilion. Chicago’s Volume Gallery (opens in new tab) (see W*133) are showing new design pieces by the duo as part of the Design On/Site (opens in new tab) satellite show, alongside galleries such as Milan’s Erastudio Apartment (opens in new tab) gallery, Tel Aviv’s Design Space (opens in new tab) and Beirut’s Carwan Gallery (opens in new tab), premiering new designs by Gaetano Pesce, India Mahdavi and Noam Dover and Michal Cederbaum, respectively.
The main fair is dominated by first rank design dealers from New York and Paris, amongst them Galerie Kreo (opens in new tab), which is showing new works from Pierre Charpin and Jean-Baptiste Fastrez.
Here’s our selection of exhibitors who definitely deserve a visit during the fair and the new designs they will be premiering. Thinking and re-thinking ‘making’ and craft remain the key concerns for contemporary designers. And if there is a common theme to all the works we have highlighted here, it is this elevation and exploration of process.
Galerie BSL (opens in new tab)
Material and colour are at the core of Kalpakian's design ethos. The designer investigates duality in his furniture by juxtaposing different materials and audacious colour palettes, drawn from his former foray into street art, to alter the visual narrative.
Galerie BSL (opens in new tab)
The former graffiti artist applies to furniture his exploration of the scientific phenomenon of bistability - a fundmental phenonomen in nature in which an object can be resting in either of two states.
Victor Hunt (opens in new tab)
The Brussels-based gallery is presenting new pieces by Belgian designer Sylvain Willenz. The 'Block' collection is the result of Willenz's four-year residency at the International Glass and Visual Arts Research Centre (CIRVA), based in Marseille.
Location: Design On/Site Galleries exhibition
Victor Hunt (opens in new tab)
Each piece in the series is made by coating an Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) mould in hot glass.
Victor Hunt (opens in new tab)
The ‘Shift’ table (pictured) was also produced at CIRVA. It is blown from a single piece of glass, using a specially developed steel mould with moving parts.
Cristina Grajales Gallery (opens in new tab)
New York gallerist and Wallpaper* favourite Cristina Grajales is exhibiting new works by Sam Baron, Christophe Côme, Sebastian Errazuriz, Hechizoo, and Suzanne Tick. 'The Walking Bench' (pictured), in marble, is a new piece by Paraguayan designer Pedro Barrail.
Location: main fair at Design Miami
Cristina Grajales Gallery (opens in new tab)
Barrail's work combines the traditional indigenous crafts of South America with modern ideas and technologies. In this particular instance he was influenced by the sounds of the migrating birds he heard while constructing a pavilion on the coast of Paraguay.
Galerie Kreo (opens in new tab)
Paris' granddaddy of design galleries is appearing at the main fair with new works by Pierre Charpin, including this coffee table covered in Bisazza tiles.
Location: main fair at Design Miami
Design Space (opens in new tab)
Tel Aviv’s Design Space commissioned design partnership Noam Dover and Michal Cederbaum for this year's fair. ‘Concrete’ (pictured) is a series of vases made in a material not usually associated with the hand-crafted. The vases were cast in the same mould but designed to fray and fragment at the top.
Location: Design On/Site Galleries exhibition
Design Space (opens in new tab)
Dover and Cederbaum specialise in collaborations with others artists and designers and for this series they have worked with theatre director and design Amit Drori; the designer, Yoav Reches; the artist and musician Tom Tlalim; and video artist Jerome Vernez. The ‘Saj’ tables (pictured) are hand crafted in steel and use pressed steel domes usually used for making thin pita bread.
Booo (opens in new tab)
Eindhoven’s Booo is on a mission to bridge the gap between mass-production and avant-garde design, and radically re-invent the lightblub along the way. As part of Design On/Site, it is presenting 'The Surface Tension Lamp' by the Swedish design collective Front. The lamp is essentially a hybrid LED light source/bubble blowing machine that will create three million short-lived bubble-bulbs during the 50,000 hour lifetime of an LED. Front were particularly interested in the way the bubble could act as shifting mirror.
Location: Design On/Site Galleries exhibition
Erastudio (opens in new tab)
Milan’s excellent Erastudio is introducing new works by the Italian architect Geatano Pesce in Miami. The ‘America Table’ and ‘Jefferson Chair’ are Pesce’s tribute to American democracy. The ‘America’ table features an epoxy resin top in the geographic shape of the US and supported by letters (pictured) which spell the word ‘Independence’.
Location: Design On/Site Galleries exhibition
Galerie Vivid (opens in new tab)
Rotterdam’s Galerie Vivid is presenting new works by Anglo-Dutch design duo Studio Glithero, including a series of silverware vases (pictured), and new tables by Richard Woods and Sebastian Wrong.
Location: main fair at Design Miami
Galerie Vivid (opens in new tab)
Sarah van Gameren and Tim Simpson, collectively Studio Glithero, have adapted a photographic technique to created impressions of seaweed on porcelain.
Galerie Vivid (opens in new tab)
These hand-turned porcelain vases have a photo-sensitive surface. Studio Glithero place seaweed, foraged from the English Channel, on to a vase and then expose it to light to create a permanent photogram.
Galerie Vivid (opens in new tab)
'The Bent Wood Table' is a collaboration between British artist Richard Woods and designer Sebastian Wrong.
Galerie Vivid (opens in new tab)
The tables are produced by craftsmen in Udinese, northern Italy, who curl wooden planks using steam. Woods then printed one of his now familiar wood grain patterns on to the surface of these ‘blanks’.
Mondo Cane (opens in new tab)
The New York gallery is introducing new works by the Minneapolis-based Rolu design studio. Pictured is 'Nature/Nurture (after Otto Herbert Hajek)'
Location: Design On/Site Galleries exhibition
Mondo Cane (opens in new tab)
Rolu started as a landscape design firm but has since moved into architecture, public art and furniture making. These pieces are described as 'sculptural book cases' and are handmade in walnut and formica.
Mondo Cane (opens in new tab)
'Seven Stacked Benches (After Shelves)' by Rolu
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