Fashion designer Rick Owens first exhibited his ’furniture’ designs - although functional pieces, they were more like monumental totems - back in 2010. Since then Owens has more than proved that this is no dilettante distraction from his proper job. He is a designer of serious intent, made very clear in his new show, ’Prehistoric’, which opens at Carpenters Workshop Gallery in London next week.
Owens’ design colour palette in this seven piece collection stretches from white to black, stopping nowhere in between. But this is the rarest sort of monochromatics. The whites are the whites of ox bone and alabaster while his dark materials are 500,000 year old petrified wood or (in stark contrast, or not), painted plywood.
Produced by Italian craftsmen using local materials, the collection includes chairs, a dining table, couch, daybed and an enormous screen - and look as if they have been taken from a fantastic temple, the props for strange ceremonies.
