In the industrial village of Fiorano Modenese, Italy, a new exhibition celebrates the quiet poetry of everyday objects. Conceived by Italian art curator Sarah Cosulich, ‘An Ode to Things’ brings together paintings, sculptures, and design pieces that explore the beauty found in simple forms and domestic stillness.

Drawn from the private collection of Massimo Orsini, founder of ceramics brand Mutina, the exhibition reflects a deep appreciation for the artistry of the inanimate – vases, vessels, furniture, and decor elevated beyond function into something more contemplative. Timed to coincide with nearby Bologna’s ArteFiera art fair, the event also marks an important anniversary for the brand. ‘Mutina is celebrating 20 years, and among the many things we have done, the most important is the relationship we have forged with the artists and designers who have shaped this entire world of creativity,’ Cosulich said at the opening.

Installed in an intimate corner of Mutina’s expansive showroom – part of the Patricia Urquiola-designed Mutina HQ in Fiorano – the exhibition invites viewers to linger, to look closer, and to find meaning in the ordinary. The show takes its name from a poem by Pablo Neruda, the Chilean Nobel laureate, in which he professes his enduring love for objects. He writes: ‘I have a crazy, / crazy love of things. / I like pliers, / and scissors. / I love / cups, / rings, / and bowls – / not to speak, of course, / of hats.’

Much like Neruda’s poem, the works on display similarly dwell on the presence of the inanimate, with each piece underscoring the beauty of the everyday. An ethereal glass vessel by Ingeborg Lundin is set against an oil painting depicting a living room side table, also with a vase, by John Currin; the real and the depicted vessels each hold a delicate floral arrangement

Also present are artworks from Mutina’s previous, curated ‘Mutina for Art’ collections. Two vases by the French brothers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec – a fluted cylindrical form and a rounded tube with knobbly protrusions – are placed in conversation with a moody still life from the Parisian painter Aimée Moreau and a dreamlike interior imagined by the acclaimed photographer Luigi Ghirri, who hails from nearby Reggio Emilia.

‘It is a project that, for the first time, allows us to combine Massimo’s collection with modern and contemporary design,’ said Cosulich. ‘It’s blurring the boundary between what is art and what is an object.’

‘An Ode to Things’, part of the Mutina for Art programme at Spazio Mutina Fiorano, opened 6 February and runs until 8 August 2025, mutina.it

Legendary lighting designer Ingo Maurer once said, ‘Design is a way of thinking, and lighting is a way of feeling.’ Through their substantial size and scale, floor lamps possess the power to transform a room, commanding attention and creating atmospheric pockets of light and visual interest. They can serve as sculptural statement pieces that draw the eye or as supporting acts that quietly enhance the overall ambience of a space. Our carefully curated selection of standing lamps features designs from the 1930s to the present, united by experimental spirit, tactile materiality, and thoughtfully considered proportions.

‘Meld’ floor lamps by Gather Glass and Emma Payne Ceramics

Emma Payne worked with glassmaker Phoebe Stubbs of Gather Glass to create this modular series of ceramic lamps. Also available in table and cocktail sizes, the lamps are formed of ceramic sections that can be stacked to various heights and configured with multiple lights. The sections are made from textural, ceramic-glazed stoneware while the diffusers are hand-blown glass. ‘We worked out the design through a series of collaborative sketches and material combinations,’ Payne explains. ‘As designer craftsmen, we would work in our separate studios and then meet to show how our works had progressed and developed. The meeting of two materials and two minds.’

From £3,100, emmalouisepayne.com

‘Monoscope’ floor lamp by Allied Maker

Notable for its refined details and buttery tan leather shade that casts a diffused light both upward and downward, the ‘Monoscope’ floor lamp by New York lighting brand Allied Maker exudes a classic sophistication reminiscent of traditional libraries or study rooms. Its disc-shaped shade, crafted from two 18-inch diameter frosted glass panels and encased in soft tan leather, pairs seamlessly with a matching leather-wrapped stem, brass pull chain, and bronze patina metal accents.

From $9,900, alliedmaker.com

‘Madra’ floor lamp by Alara Alkan Studio

Turkish-American designer Alara Alkan describes her work as driven by a deep curiosity for materials and inspired by the transformative effects of tides, wind, and sunlight. Her ‘Madra’ lamp embodies this ethos, pairing an airy linen shade with a substantial, tapered white oak stem to create a harmonious balance of form and material. Designed during Alkan’s residency at New York design gallery Colony – an incubator programme nurturing emerging design talent – the lamp made its debut in June 2024.

goodcolony.com

‘Cellu’ floor lamp by Simon Legald for Normann Copenhagen

Created by Danish designer Simon Legald for Normann Copenhagen, the ‘Cellu’ floor lamp combines an archetypal form with surprising materials – a shade made from pleated PVC and a chunky column in powder-coated aluminium. The steel base provides stability and an accent of colour. ‘In my design, I try not to add any unnecessary details,’ says Legald of his approach. ‘I work with simplicity by highlighting the necessities instead of hiding them. It gives the product a simple and honest expression.’

£355, available through Heal’s

‘Roattino’ floor lamp by Eileen Gray for ClassiCon

Recalling a bird elegantly perched on one leg, Eileen Gray’s sinuous ‘Roattino’ floor lamp was designed in 1931, its minimalist form standing in bold defiance against the ornate styles of the era. Now produced by German maker ClassiCon, the S-shaped design has gained renewed popularity, featuring a swivelling fabric shade, a new dimming function, and a fresh white colourway.

£2,074 , available through Aram.co.uk

‘Superwire’ by Formafantasma for Flos

Formafantasma’s ‘SuperWire’ lighting collection for Flos was praised far and wide by design devotees when it was launched at Milan Design Week 2024. Including this three-legged floor lamp design, the ‘SuperWire’ lamps are composed of hexagonal modules encased in flat glass panels, all set within a sleek aluminium framework. Inside each module, 12 slender LED strips, protected by spaghetti-sized borosilicate tubes, emit a warm, inviting glow. Formafantasma designed the series with sustainability in mind, allowing the glass panels to be easily removed for simple repair or replacement of the LEDs.

£4,154, available from November on flos.com

‘Cyclopedus’ series by Atelier Malak

Paris-based designer Malacau Lefebvre of Studio Malak strives to create pieces that are, in his words, ‘as expressive as possible’ and imbued with a sense of ‘emotional charge’. For instance, his bent steel ‘Cyclopedus’ lighting collection features floor lamps that, while resembling simple line drawings, carry a striking anthropomorphic quality – like figures curiously craning their necks for a better view.

From €600, Atelier Malak

‘Uptown’ by Ferruccio Laviani for Foscarini

Three slabs of coloured glass in shades of yellow, red and blue are stacked together to create Ferruccio Laviani’s ‘Uptown’ floor lamp for Foscarini. In a composition that recalls a New York skyscraper, the glass blocks overlap, giving rise to new colourful hues that look alluring whether illuminated or not. Introduced in 2019, Laviani says of the design: ‘The art deco and Memphis geometries, the multiple combination possibilities afforded by glass and the 1960s-style glass slab accessories… the list of what inspired “Uptown” could go on forever. I wanted to convey the intrinsic wealth of the material, its unique way of conveying transparency and colour.’

£3,846, available through Lamp Twist

‘Callimaco’ by Ettore Sottsass for Artemide

With its bold colours, unconventional form and playful details, the ‘Callimaco’ floor lamp, designed by Ettore Sottsass in 1982, epitomises the spirit of the Memphis movement, which Sottsass helped to establish. The lamp's design includes a chrome-plated handle, a sleek painted aluminium stem, and a painted steel cone-shaped diffuser, recalling the silhouette of a trumpet. A true piece of design history.

£1,415, available through Madeindesign.co.uk and Twentytwentyone.com

‘Dórica’ by Jordi Miralbell and Mariona Raventós for Santa & Cole

Inspired by classical columns and named after the Doric order in architecture, the ‘Dórica’ lamp was designed by Spanish designers Jordi Miralbell and Mariona Raventós for Santa & Cole in 1994. Its enduring appeal lies in the thoughtful simplicity of its crafted details and blend of warm materials – a cotton ribbon shade, a sturdy bronze structure, and a leather cord grip. Raventós once said, ‘Design is the art of making the utilitarian into a desired thing, into human warmth, into something generated by man,’ a sentiment beautifully embodied in this piece.

£1,578, available through Lamp Twist and SCP

In the decades that followed World War II, post-fascist Italy experienced a cultural revolution. The political awakening the resulted from years of dictatorship led to a creative renaissance, shifting the country’s cultural landscape forever. While arte povera artists, from the late 1960s onwards, celebrated a return to simple and unconventional materials, coincidentally, the radical design movement proposed new ways of living, empowering a generation of architects who were critical of traditional planning methods.

Paying homage to the radical legacy of the period spanning from the mid-1940s to the 1970s, the exhibition Utopia has turned Tornabuoni Art in Paris into a salon of intimate conversations between Italy’s greatest post-war artists and architects. ‘The exhibition is not about creating historical links between them,’ explains French architect Charles Zana, who curated and conceived the group show in collaboration with the Florence-born gallery. ‘It is about their common ways of understanding their time.’

For Utopia, Zana has paired 17 artists with 17 designers and architects, creating a mise-en-scène of imaginary scenarios in which Giorgio De Chirico befriends Ettore Sottsass and Lucio Fontana meditates with Carlo Mollino. Whether linked by a similar aesthetic sensitivity, philosophical concerns or shared vocabulary, the Italian duos dismantle the boundaries between art and design to reveal the common approaches that came to define this hopeful epoch. If architect Andrea Branzi and artist Piero Paolo Calzolari never had a chance to meet in real life, Zana claims they now have: ‘I created a meeting between them, a sharing of values.'

Other significant works include a cast resin dining table by Gaetano Pesce from 1980, a wooden chair by Carlo Mollino from 1959 and a camouflage fabric on frame by Alighiero Boetti from 1967. ‘It was very emotional when we opened the boxes,’ recounts Zana, who sourced the historical pieces from a number of collections and foundations across Europe. ‘I was very touched to discover the works, some of which I had only seen in pictures.’ The exhibition will be on show until 21 December at the gallery’s Paris outpost, and is part of a programme of exhibitions devoted to the Italian cultural landscape from the 1950s to the 1980s.

INFORMATION

Utopia is on view until 21 December. tornabuoniart.fr

ADDRESS

9 Rue Charlot,
75003 Paris

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Over 20 years before founding Memphis in 1980 – the subversive Italian design and architecture group that spearheaded a movement against the rigid rules of modernism – a young Ettore Sottsass was already experimenting with the radical design language that would later become his legacy. Created between 1955 and 1970, these artisanal experiments in form and colour were realised in ceramic and enamel – a medium that the designer returned to over and over throughout his 60-year career.

Over 150 of the works that Sottsass created during this early period are now assembled at Phillips’ London galleries on Berkeley Square in a non-selling exhibition titled ‘Ettore Sottsass: Fragile’.

‘There has never been an exhibition of Sottsass’s ceramics like this one,’ says French architect and avid Sottsass collector Charles Zana, who co-curated the exhibition with historian Fulvio Ferrari. ‘We want to show people this fantastic saga.’

The collections on show, Zana informs, were largely produced over a ten-year period by small artisanal workshops such as Bitossi for Milanese gallery Il Sestante. For Sottsass, the pieces were created purely as a creative outlet with very few actually being sold at the time of their production.

‘Maybe some were given to friends and intellectuals in Milan, but they were very unconventional for their time,’ remarks Zana, who says that Sottsass produced around ten collections over ten years for the gallery. ‘That's why I find it so remarkable that this young architect managed to convince the best ceramic company to produce them. I am always interested in people who were not commercially successful in their time,’ he adds.

Zana has been collecting Sotsass’s works for around 20 years and estimates that he has around 50 of the designer’s pieces in his personal collection, although he hasn’t ever counted.

‘Every collection has something to say about Sottsass – he created them as an artist not an architect,’ he enthuses. ‘This is why these years were so incredibly rich.’

Starting from 1955 the pieces show that even in the beginning the designer was pushing boundaries. Between 1957 and 1959 he produced Ceramiche di lava – a series of around 30 pleasingly tactile pieces with rough surfaces made from lava – according to Zana he was the first artist to do so. From here he abandoned the material entirely and switched direction.

‘This is what makes the way he worked so interesting. It’s a very modern way to think,’ comments Zana. ‘Each year the collections were very different.’

In Sottsass’s work from the early 1960s we start to see the emergence of the black and white grid that became a signature trademark for the designer. This pattern, Zana says, was influenced by his upbringing in the Italian Tyrol and the influence of Austrian designers such as Josef Hoffman and the artists of the Wiener Werkstätte.

The large-scale totems that Sottsass produced in 1967 for Enzo Sperone Gallery in Milan are perhaps some of his most recognisable works. Zana says that despite their cheerful appearance, these colourful stacked forms were actually inspired by the cocktail of pills he was prescribed during a stay at a treatment centre in Palo Alto when suffering from nephritis. It was at this time during his illness that he also dreamt up the Ceramic of Darkness collection, with its hallucinogenic sun and moon symbolism. Meanwhile the Yantra series from 1969 references the designer’s ongoing fascination with Tantric art and Indian culture. 

‘Sottsass was someone that could be dark,’ explains Zana. ‘He was always working with old materials, simple form, very basic colour and was inspired by ancient culture, but at the same time his work was very modern – I’m very moved by that.

With his encyclopaedic knowledge, Zana’s stories bring the collections to life, yet at the Phillips exhibition, the ceramics are left to speak for themselves – a missed opportunity perhaps. Presented in groups across the space, these miniature ceramic skylines illustrate the designer’s unique and experimental aesthetic while serving as a reminder that there was much more to the man than Memphis. 

To coincide with the opening this week, Zana also celebrates the launch of his book, Charles Zana: The Art of Interiors, published by Rizzoli, and the launch of a series of furniture pieces with London gallery The Invisible Collection. Pieces are on show at the brand’s discreet Belgravia townhouse showroom until 12 April.

INFORMATION

‘Ettore Sottsass: Fragile’ is on view until 15 February. For more information, visit the Phillips website

ADDRESS

30 Berkeley Square
London

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Celebrated for his vibrant and rebellious approach to architecture and design, Ettore Sottsass has re-entered the spotlight in recent years with the revival of postmodernism and embracing of the pattern-clashing ardour of the 1980s, and now a plethora of centennial celebrations (he was born 14 Sept 1917). His highly desirable creations have as much influence on the current design culture as that of yesteryear, and an impressive assortment of 40 Sottsass pieces will go under the hammer on 23 October in Paris, in the ‘Repertorio Sottsass’ auction organised by Artcurial.

Spread across the 20 lots are a more recent pastel painting of a bedroom scene (2004) and the polychrome enamelled copper ‘mod 220’ plate (1958), as well as handsome icons like the Sideboard for Poltronova (1959) –  a sassy side-step away from modernist minimalism, made from rosewood, lacquered wood and bronze valued at €25,000 - €35,000 – and the elegant ‘suspension’ hanging light (1957), valued at €50,000 - €70,000.

The retro 1970s ‘Poupouf’ chairs will rub shoulders with the luxe ‘Harlow’ chair, the ‘Cavaliere’ floor lamp (1981) and ‘Sapho’ cup (1986) – true Memphis joys bursting with colour — will make an appearance, as will a rare silk-screened Murano glass table clock (1965). With estimated prices ranging from €3,000 to €150,000, there is some Sottsass for everyone.

Sottsass’s biography was equally as riotous as his beloved design objects and architectural interventions. Ceramics, jewellery, photography, painting, architecture, and interior design were all part of his toolkit by the time Sottsass had established his own design studio in Milan, aged 30.

With routine stints in the United States and India that strongly influenced his design sensibilities, Sottsass heralded such bizarre and later iconic commissions as the first Italian mainframe computer in 1958, and the slick, fire engine red portable typewriter ‘Valentine’ in 1969.

By the time he founded the Memphis Group in Milan at the end of 1980, christening it with a Bob Dylan tune, Sottsass’s reputation as a dissident of design had preceded him. It is no doubt that Artcurial’s slices of Sottsass wonderfully energetic world will be recognised by both collectors and makers worldwide in Paris this autumn. 

INFORMATION

The ‘Sottsass Century’ auction is on 23 october 2018. For more information, visit the Artcurial website

‘I think it’s my inner child speaking,’ fine jeweller Sabine Getty explains of her love of bold, primary colours. ‘I love things that take me out of reality and into a happier world.’

It’s no wonder, then, that bright, cartoonish tones from the 1980s infiltrate both Getty’s work and home. The Memphis art movement has long inspired her, be it the zany, zig-zagging rows of diamonds on rings and the bright, waved bangles of her last collection, ‘Memphis’, or the designer’s acid-hued, Ettore Sotsass-filled apartment in Mayfair, London. Her new collection, BIG, follows suit, though this time pooling colour palettes and geometric playfulness from the Eighties film world – specifically the 1988 Tom Hanks hit of the same name.

‘I think the link I have to that decade is totally emotional,’ Getty explains. ‘It’s nostalgia for my childhood: the subconscious memory of growing up with colour and fun design such as the Memphis Group, and watching all the zany films of the time.’ The BIG collection riffs on games paraphernalia, such as dominoes, building blocks and children’s toys, in soft sweet-shop shades. A sugary pink sapphire encrusted doughnut ring hangs from a fine gold collar while elementary shapes – triangles, squares, oblongs – adorn fingers and ear lobes in blue and green sapphires.

But why Big? The film in which a miscalculated wish sees a 12-year-old boy wake up one morning as a 30-year-old man (Hanks), and whose speedy acquisition of an executive job as toy-tester for a world-famous company sets in motion a series of comic events. ‘It’s one of my all-time favourite movies. I think it resonated with kids everywhere and that’s why it’s such a cult hit… the idea of somehow being a kid that must play grown up. Dream and fantasy is so embedded into the movie’s reality that it totally blew my mind!’

An afternoon spent in the playroom with her daughter Gene inspired Getty to rethink her child’s bright wooden shapes, and imagine ‘a world of love, colour, innocence and childishness’. After all, who said life had to be all work and no play?

Sabine Getty in her new London studio/showroom, wearing a Courrèges top and skirt and Chanel boots. Furnishings include a ‘Kristall’ side table by Michele De Lucchi (left), a ‘Tahiti’ duck lamp by Ettore Sottsass (right) and a ‘Brazil’ desk by Peter Shire, all for Memphis. Originally featured in the September 2016 issue of Wallpaper* (W*210)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Sabine Getty website

For 30 years French art director, scenographer and designer Alexandre de Betak has pulled off some the fashion world’s most outstanding catwalk shows. Who could forget the 59 ft mountain of blue delphiniums he constructed in the courtyard of the Louvre for Raf Simons’ final Dior show in 2015, or last year’s Paris show for Rodarte in a 16th-century hospital garden cloister – a location de Betak himself found.

In addition to pulling together more than 1,000 catwalk spectacles, the runway producer has also designed furniture and houses and amassed a vast collection of art and objets. On 28 March, Paris auction house Piasa holds a sale of more than 200 pieces taken from his Paris apartment. Among them are minimal and kinetic artworks and lights, furniture from the 1940s to the 1970s and prototypes of his own pieces.

INFORMATION

‘Alexandre de Betak, My Parisian Interior Art + Design’ is on view from 22 – 28 March. For more information, visit the Piasa website

ADDRESS

Piasa
118 rue du faubourg
saint-honoré 75008
Paris

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The visionary architect and designer Ettore Sottsass is being honoured front and centre at the Met Breuer in New York City, one of the most monumental celebrations (of the many) of his 100th birthday this year. With a career that spanned over six decades, Sottsass’ extensive body of work has been neatly distilled by the museum into a show spanning architectural drawings, interiors, ceramics, textiles, jewellery, painting, glass and of course furniture, that truly sums up the breadth of his talents.

Curated by Christian Larsen, associate curator of modern design and decorative arts, ‘Ettore Sottsass: Design Radical’ brings together some of the designer’s most recognisable works, including his ‘Carleton Room Divider’ (1981), ‘Tartar’ table (1985), Olivetti portable typewriter (1968), and ceramic vessels for Bitossi, and a selection of rarer ones. Of these, five industrial ceramic totems – ‘Menhir, Ziggurat’,‘Stupas’, ‘Hydrants’, and ‘Gas Pumps’ (1965–66) – originally displayed at Galleria Sperone in 1967, are the most commanding and reflect many of the principles, materials and techniques that subsequently formed the Memphis movement in 1981.

To palpably prove Sottsass’ enduring influence on the world of design and art, Larsen has also included several contemporary art and design pieces in the exhibition. Works by Donald Judd, the British design studio Oeuffice, Norwegian jewellery designer Millie Behrens and Studio Job easily demonstrate how Sottsass’ distinctive aesthetic has seeped into different aspects of the art and design world. Conversely, a selection of ancient totems, furniture by Koloman Moser, paintings by Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky delineate the early influences for Sottsass’ own output.

The exhibition is capped off with a special, limited-edition selection of Sottsass-designed and influenced products in The Met Store, available for purchase. From a colourful building block set by Out For Space and Oeuffice’s ‘Kapital’ Collection stools (featured in the exhibition) to objects and furniture designed by members of the Memphis movement, any acquisition visitors might take away will no doubt leave their lives a little brighter.

INFORMATION

‘Ettore Sottsass: Design Radical’ is on view until 8 October. For more details, please visit the Met Breuer website

ADDRESS

Met Breuer
945 Madison Ave
New York NY 10021

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Exhibitions documenting the life and work of Ettore Sottsass (1917–2007) abound this year as galleries and museums – such as The Met and Le Stanze del Vetro – celebrate what would have been the influential Austro-Italian designer’s 100th birthday. One of the latest surveys comes courtesy of furniture manufacturing megalith Vitra, which recently opened ‘Ettore Sottsass – Rebel and Poet’ at its Basel campus in Switzerland.

Located in the new Herzog & de Meuron-designed Schaudepot space, the exhibition sees the family-owned brand draw from its own archives to form a showcase of approximately 30 of Sottsass’ furniture designs, consumer products, as well as numerous photographs and writings. The exhibition, Vitra says, ‘pays tribute to an extraordinary designer who did not regard form and function as constraints, but rather viewed design as an opportunity to explore the nature of human existence’.

Supplemented by excerpts from Sottsass’ poetic and literary texts, as well as photographs from the ‘Metafore’ series (1972-1979), where Sottsass reveals his thoughts on fundamental design issues, the exhibition tracks the unconventional designer’s development, and demonstrates how he succeeded in challenging the established tastes of the middle class throughout his career.

His collaborations with furniture manufacturer Poltronova and office equipment manufacturer Olivetti resulted in bold, rule-breaking designs that demonstrate his early love of vivid colours and distinctive structures. His ‘Califfo’ sofa (1964) for Poltronova is among the exhibited works, as is his pillar box red ‘Valentine’ typewriter (1969) for Olivetti.

In the 1970s, Sottsass took on various roles: as a participant in the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition ‘Italy: The New Domestic Landscape’ (1972); as a central figure of the design initiative Global Tools (1973-1975); and as a member of the design collective Alchimia (1976-1980), when he created the characterful ‘Seggiolina da Pranzo’ (1979-80) – one the 30 showcased pieces.

However, Sottsass is perhaps best remembered as the leading figure of the 1980s design collective Memphis, where he created some of his most distinctive work. Inspired by pop culture and liberated from a functionalist design approach, it was during this time that Sottsass created the ‘Carlton’ bookcase (1981), the lamps ‘Ashoka’ (1981) ‘Tahiti’ (1981), and the ‘Tartar’ table (1985).

Running until 24 September, Vitra’s exhibition serves as an insightful tribute to this 20th-century designer, rebel and poet, whose legacy continues to enrich our everyday lives.

INFORMATION

‘Ettore Sottsass – Rebel and Poet’ is on view until 24 September. For more information, visit the Vitra Museum website

ADDRESS

Vitra Schaudepot
Charles-Eames-Strasse 2
79576 Weil am Rhein

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A decade in business might seem a just occasion to look back on past successes and accomplishments, but New York design gallery Friedman Benda is gazing ahead. Instead of staging a retrospective to celebrate its tenth anniversary, the gallery has assembled 20 artists and designers from its past, present and future to articulate the guiding principles that continue to set it apart. Entitled ‘DNA10’, the commemorative show features multiple iconic sculptural pieces and a range of sketches, drawings, videos, mood boards and models that explore each artist’s practice, highlighting their place in the canon of sculptural design.

‘Ten years is not an eternity compared with a lot of galleries, but we joke that we want to do it while we’re still young and good-looking,’ says the gallery’s Zurich-born founder Marc Benda. ‘I wanted to do this in celebration of everyone who’s contributed and who, with the exception of Ettore Sottsass and Shiro Kuramata, is still very much alive and kicking.’

Established in 2007 by Benda and the veteran art dealer Barry Friedman (now retired), together with founding partner Jennifer Olshin, the Chelsea-based gallery has dedicated itself from the get-go to giving artists and designers a platform. Friedman Benda’s roster features influential talents such as Kuramata, Sottsass, Ron Arad, the Campana brothers and Wendell Castle.

In 2015, the gallery separated its visual art enterprises into a new entity, Albertz Benda (co-founded with the art dealer Thorsten Albertz). This allowed Friedman Benda to focus solely on design-art. The gallery also put a new emphasis on emerging designers, aided in part by the opening of an experimental project space. Adam Silverman and Misha Kahn are among the artists who have had the chance to transform that space.

See selfies taken for Wallpaper* by some of the designers whose work appears in the ‘DNA10’ show

Finding a way to showcase such a diverse design roster was a struggle. ‘We look more forward than back in this show,’ Benda says. ‘It’s an extremely complex undertaking because I’m trying to put together for the public all the reasons that make each designer so strong, and what fascinated us about them in the first place – whether it’s process, trains of thought [or] an approach to creation and realisation. Each designer is looked at in their own individual way. The show doesn’t try to press everyone into a pre-made square.’

‘These people are all part of the DNA from the last ten years,’ Olshin adds. ‘It’s not necessarily about the gallery exactly where it is now – it’s almost a culmination.’

‘It’s also to show the diversity of the programme that we’ve reached,’ Benda says. ‘Five continents, four to five generations, approaches ranging from the handmade to the highly industrial, or very cutting edge and high tech. There are people whose work is so far advanced and accomplished, and there are others who are still less known.’

‘DNA10’ opens with four iconic design pieces that the gallery refers to as ‘archetypes’: Gerrit Rietveld’s Red Blue chair (1919-21), Sottsass’ Large Aphrodisiac Vase [for Conserving Contraceptive Pills] (1966), Kuramata’s Miss Blanche chair (1989) and Joris Laarman’s Bone armchair (2006).

‘They are the first designers who greet you,’ Benda says. ‘[Rietveld is] an anchor point because he’s one of the grandfathers of all the things we do; applying the rigour of an art movement to creating a chair that completely bursts the mould of what a chair can be or should even represent. For us, he’s one of the people who threw open the gates.’

The exhibition also showcases creatives such as Andrea Branzi, Faye Toogood, Marcel Wanders, Paul Cocksedge, Front, Byung Hoon Choi and Forrest Myers, who have all shown with the gallery. ‘A few things are made specially for the show, but we didn’t want to put pressure on the designers to create something for this,’ Benda says. ‘There were a couple of people who specifically wanted to do this, and that’s great.’

Christopher Schanck, a Detroit-based sculptor, is debuting a tall cabinet from his recognisable Alufoil series, in which he covers discarded materials with coloured aluminium foil and seals them in clear resin for a heightened material effect. Schanck’s first ever solo show is currently scheduled at Friedman Benda for February 2018 – it will be more than a year in the making.

In the past ten years, Friedman Benda’s unassuming gallery space has been repeatedly transformed by the creative visions of its artists. It became an immersive environment for Nendo’s 2009 ‘Ghost Stories’ exhibition, with 6,800 threads suspended from the ceiling. It has presented momentous new work, such as Cocksedge’s 2015 Freeze furniture series, for which pieces of metal were cooled to freezing temperatures and then warmed up to forge a seamless bond between them. And it has staged unprecedented showcases, such as the 2007 survey of new works by Sottsass.

The gallery’s stagings have certainly not been conservative. ‘I feel like we never stood still,’ says Benda. ‘We’ve never allowed ourselves to sit down and reflect. It’s a really nice thing for me to know that we’ve always stayed on our toes, looked around, never taken things for granted.’

Above all, Friedman Benda prides itself on its integrity and commitment to quality. ‘We want to work with leaders in whatever direction they choose,’ Benda says. ‘We want to work with people who are or promise to become larger than life in many ways. It’s about the longevity, the long horizon.’

‘If the artists are good, they’re always producing something, always going forward,’ adds Olshin. ‘How we see our role is to say at some point, stop the camera right here, and we show that. That’s how we produce what we do – it’s a moment. All of these pieces will continue, hopefully, to evolve into other things and other bodies of work.’

As originally featured in the June 2017 issue of Wallpaper* (W*219)

INFORMATION

‘DNA10’ is on view until 10 June. For more information, visit the Friedman Benda website

ADDRESS

Friedman Benda
515 West 26th Street
New York, NY, 10001

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It’s a concrete Valhalla, concealed behind the arches of Piazza San Marco in Venice. The Negozio Olivetti, once a showroom for the company’s typewriters and calculators, designed by its erstwhile art director Carlo Scarpa in 1957-58, and now a museum run by FAI (the Italian Environmental Foundation), is an architectural treat. It’s one that the French architect and design-art collector Charles Zana never tires of visiting.

‘The staircase is possibly one of the most Instagrammed pieces of architecture,’ he says. It was while caressing the concrete balustrades of the interior during 2015’s Venice Art Biennale that Zana struck on the idea of introducing the space to a new crowd – the Biennale art-trippers – by combining it with the work of Ettore Sottsass, another of his design heroes (and another one-time Olivetti art director, who created the brand’s first computer, alongside its Valentine typewriter). The subject of the four-month exhibition this year would not be Sottsass’ Memphis masterpieces of the 1980s, but his early work with ceramic, when the painter manqué, who forewent his first love of art to follow his father into architecture, started applying his painterly eye to terracotta, mixing colour and decoration with structure and form in an original way.

‘Ceramics is a very important part of Sottsass’ work, maybe the best thing he did, but it’s only known by a few collectors and museum directors,’ Zana says. He has been collecting the ceramics since 2000, alongside the work of Andrea Branzi, Alessandro Mendini and Michele De Lucchi. They’re Memphis stalwarts, but it’s their early work, the Alchimia movement, that attracts him. ‘They moved the frontier between art and design – design became a way to rethink society, colours, the furniture industry, comfort,’ says Zana, who trained at Paris’ Beaux-Arts in the mid-1980s, and developed a practice combining architecture with interior design.

Zana takes particular interest in Sottsass’ work from the late 1950s, when he was producing collections with Bitossi for Milan gallery Il Sestante. ‘He had discovered terracotta and was exploring techniques linked to early Italian civilisation, mixing them with modern design,’ says Zana. ‘He would do a collection every year based on his mood. So when he was in a dark place he did one called Ceramiche Delle Tenebre (ceramics of darkness), for example, something very new for that time.’

For this exhibition Zana is lending ten to 12 of his own pieces and has persuaded other private collectors to lend theirs, making a total of around 60. The pieces cover 1955 to 1970, from Sottsass’ early forays for Il Sestante to his graphic Tantra and Yantra collections inspired by excursions in India. ‘This is going to be a fantastic way for people to take in two things you wouldn’t usually see together,’ says Zana of his subject and location. ‘It’s very emotional for me to think that the two architects I respect the most in the 20th century were working for the same company. It’s an homage to the two former art directors of Olivetti.’

As originally featured in the May 2017 issue of Wallpaper* (W*218)

INFORMATION

’Ettore Sottsass: La Céramique 1955-1970’ is on view until 20 August at Negozio Olivetti. For more information, visit the Negozio Olivetti website

ADDRESS

Negozio Olivetti
Piazza San Marco 101
30124 Venice

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Arranged jewel-like across the Le Stanze del Vetro showspace on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, Ettore Sottsass’ totemic glass sculptures tell the story of his life’s work. For the first exhibition dedicated entirely to the Italian designer’s work in glass and crystal, curator Luca Massimo Barbero has gathered more than 220 designs, dating between 1947 and 2007. 

The showcase, called ‘Ettore Sottsass: The Glass’, is timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of Italian architect, and is, as Barbero says, ‘dedicated to revealing a never before seen Sottsass’.

Sottsass was first introduced to glass after he moved to Milan in 1946. His first glass object – a lined spherical vase, which was probably displayed at the eighth Milan Triennale – is dated 1947. He continued to work with the medium throughout his artistic life, collaborating with some of the most important glassworks of the time, such as Vistosi, Toso Vetri d’Arte, Gino Cenedese e Figlio, and Venini.

‘Glass is an incredible medium, at once mysterious, transparent and fragile,’ Sottsass said during one of his last interviews. ‘Glass, like ceramics, has a very peculiar characteristic: one doesn’t really know what goes into the furnace. Then all of a sudden a pure object breaks out, burnt by fire, an object of sheer purity and physical intangibility. It is like a vision. One is deeply involved when making glass. Glass is spectacular.’

With an exhibition layout by New York-based firm Selldorf Architects, who was responsible for the 2012 renovation of Le Stanze del Vetro, the showcase tracks the evolution of the designer’s works from the very first series he produced for the Vistosi glassworks in 1974, to the renowned sculptures he made with Toso Vetri d’Arte following the set up of the Memphis group in 1981.

Never-seen-before pieces include a series of sculptures, designed in 1999 at the request of the Sheik of Qatar, Saud Al Thani, for his Millenium House in Doha. The exhibition, which runs until 30 July, is accompanied by the first catalogue raisonné of the complete glass production by Sottsass, published by Skira.

INFORMATION

‘Ettore Sottsass: il vetro’ is on view until 30 July. For more information, visit the Le Stanze del Vetro website

ADDRESS

Le Stanze del Vetro
Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore 1
Venice 30124

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Assab One, a former printing press owned by publishing heiress Elena Quarestani is a vast industrial space which twice a year opens exhibitions. Currently on show is ‘1+1+1’, which sees an architect (Bijoy Jain, founder of Indian practice Studio Mumbai) meet a designer (Memphis founding father George Sowden) meet an artist (Korean-born, Italy-based Chung Eun-Mo).

Each participant has created new works for the show and had free reign to approach the 2500 sq m space as they wanted. For two weeks before the opening, Jain and his craftsmen transformed his section of the gallery into an in situ studio, lime washing panels made of cow dung and bamboo, and coating sculptures made of tar with coconut oil and indigo. Sowden however, with no fixed idea in mind, arrived with cups, saucers, beer mats and silicon tea pot lids – a selection of objects that he manufactures in China at his company Sowden. He installed them as objets trouvés within colourful decorative panels and new black-and-white wallpaper and paintings.

Sowden also bought two textile hangings from the 1976, to emphasise his mantra that design has always been about decoration. ‘I was working in Ettore Sottsass’ office at that time; it was pre-Memphis and the idea that decoration could be design was unheard of,’ he explains. ‘Design was wedded to rules and dogmas and you were supposed to do things a certain way. We, as Memphis came along and said, “You can do what you want”.’

Mo too, created new canvases for the exhibition, each one a series of colourful shapes with no meaning and no title. They are similar to her highly abstract works from the 1990s, which are also on show and were made after she relocated from New York to Italy.

Curator Marco Sammicheli muses, ‘Chung Eun-Mo is always an artist, but in this show, George and Bijoy are neither designer nor architect. They too have become more like artists.’ 

INFORMATION

‘1+1+1’ is on view until 26 May. For more information, visit the Assab One website

ADDRESS

Assab One
Via Privata Assab 1
20132 Milan

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With the Design Museum on the verge of opening its sparkling new West London doors, there's an autumn design buzz in London at the moment. Coinciding with this is another celebration of international design in the capital, Sotheby's ‘Design’ – the second edition of the house's relaunched design-centric sale (last year's was the first in half a decade) and a preceding exhibition at its New Bond Street space.

Following editions hosted in New York and Paris earlier this year, 'Design' London takes place on Tuesday 15 November, offering up a expansive list of 173 pieces. Exhibiting the products from tomorrow, the roster features 20th century pieces that span the classic and contemporary, functional and abstract, spending significant effort honing in on postmodern Scandinavian design with highlights from Arne Jacobsen, Hans Wegner and Peder Moos.

These minimalist masterpieces stand alongside Gio Ponti silhouettes from the 1930s–60s; whimsical Ron Arad chairs; and experimental forms from Italian stalwarts Ettore Sottsass and Andrea Branzi.

'Just like the city itself, our London "Design" sale is developing its own unique character,' says Laetitia Contat-Desfontaines, Sotheby's head of 20th century design sales. 'Exciting new initiatives such as the inaugural [London] Design Biennale at Somerset House and the fantastic new home for the Design Museum are putting design at the forefront of the cultural life of the city.'

Contemporary lots include a marble table by Marc Newson, Studio Job’s playful 'Bottle Rack’, and clay sculptures by Maarten Baas, while extra special Picasso ceramics and Zaha Hadid prototypes show the team have most styles covered for discerning collectors.

‘Design’ follows an impressive display of David Bowie’s extensive art and design collection, marking a nuanced and successful stream of shows at the auction.

INFORMATION

’Design’ takes place at Sotheby’s on 15 November. For more information, visit the Sotheby’s website

ADDRESS

Sotheby's
34–35 New Bond Street
London W1S 2RT

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What a thrill to stand in front of David Bowie’s record player and imagine him pulling favourite albums by atonal noisemaker Glenn Branca or pioneering Dutch geeks The Electrosoniks from a shelf in his New York home and blasting them out to Iman or Brian Eno, at neighbour-bothering volumes.

Bowie’s 1960s Brionvega music centre, designed by the Castiglioni brothers, isn’t in mint condition – it’s slightly foxed around the edges of the detachable speakers, and Manhattan sunshine has discoloured the unit’s white melamine surfaces to a buttery yellow tone – but the unconventional, jolie laide piece of industrial design, exhibited in the George Street foyer of Sotheby’s ’Bowie/Collector’ sale preview in London, is indicative of the man and his eye, his intelligently informed thing, for art. Someone who collected for love, for beauty, inspiration, contemplation, entertainment and amusement, rather than just for money.   

Bowie’s fascination with not just art, but also with artists, the art world, art journalism, auction houses and the creative process of design, is well documented. Away from music he was a regular at salerooms, art fairs and ateliers. He befriended advisors and gallerists, enlisted the services of specialist dealers, wrote for art magazines, referenced art in interviews and in song lyrics – ’Joe The Lion’ from Bowie’s landmark Heroes album (’Nail me to my car and I’ll tell you who you are’) being a paean to self-harming performance artist Chris Burden.

In keeping with Bowie’s eclectic but considered preferences, the modest Sotheby’s preview offers insight into a much larger collection that acknowledges established artists – Henry Moore, Jean Michel Basquiat (Bowie purchased Air Power in 1995 for £78,500 – it’s now valued at £2.5million), Damien Hirst and Frank Auerbach are all represented here – and delights in championing the work of lesser known talent also.

So, next to the Basquiat is a is a magnificently phallic William Turnbull, an energetic, monochrome abstract by St Ives painter Peter Lanyon and a pair of naive 'outsider art' drawings by residents at Gugging, a psychiatric ward near Vienna, Austria. Bowie and Eno visited the hospital in early 1994, interviewed and photographed its patients, and bought some of their work. Their outsider art experience would become the inspiration for Bowie’s 1995 industrial rock album Outside.

An ice-cream array of furniture, lighting and ceramics is the centrepiece for the main room at the Sotheby’s show. Bowie collected Memphis – the eccentric, Marmite-ish 1980s movement founded by Ettore Sottsass. The style isn't to everyone’s taste – think of it as the Let’s Dance to the Patrick Caulfield canvas’ Station To Station – but viewed within the context of the Hirst spin painting and the dumpster sculpture pieces by Beninese artist Romauld Hazoumé, you can see how the group’s bonkers Milanese take on tribal, pop kitsch appealed. 

But it is the dessert-thick, whipped oils of Auerbach’s Head of Gerda Boehm that leaves the most lasting impression. A profoundly affecting portrait of the London-born artist’s cousin, the painting proved particularly inspirational for the songwriter. 'I can look at it and say: My God, yeah!' Bowie once said of it. 'I want to sound like that looks.'

Look behind the scenes of the unpacking of ’Bowie/Collector’ above

The 'Bowie/Collector' exhibition and auction will be staged at Sotheby's New Bond Street in November, preceeded by a preview world tour. For more information, visit the Sotheby's website

Preview World Tour:
London: 20 July – 9 August
Los Angeles: 20–21 September
New York: 26–29 September
Hong Kong: 12–15 October

The Exhibition:
'Bowie/Collector': 1–10 November, Sotheby’s New Bond Street, London

The Auctions:
Part I: Modern & Contemporary Art, Evening Auction, 10 November
Part II: Modern & Contemporary Art, Day Auction, 11 November
Part III: Post-Modernist Design: Ettore Sottsass and the Memphis Group, 11 November

'Hippie Modernism,' a major new exhibition at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, raises eyebrows as well as consciousness, yoking the tie-dye-clad, peace-and-love-preaching countercultural mascot with a movement high on more rational and precise versions of progress. This tension is at once heightened and explained by the show’s subtitle, 'The Struggle for Utopia' – a shared fight embodied by the catalogue cover image of Buckminster Fuller’s Expo 67 dome in flames.

'The Walker has always been interested in interdisciplinary things, but this show is really anti-disciplinary at its core,' says curator Andrew Blauvelt, who spent 17 years at the Center, most recently as senior curator of design, research, and publishing, before departing last month to become director of the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. 'We wanted to look at the radical nature of these propositions, whether it’s social practice in art or speculative design out of the design sector.'

Determined to fill some historical blind spots in art, design and material culture, the show focuses on a decade that kicks off with the 1964 California-to-New York acid trip of Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters and concludes with the globe-spanning OPEC oil crisis. The countercultural journey unfolds according to a three-part thematic organisation borrowed from Timothy Leary – 'Turn In, Tune In, and Drop Out' – and is illuminated by Emmet Byrne’s pitch-perfect exhibition graphics and typography (this is Cooper Black’s moment to shine) that have long been a specialty of the Walker.

Spanning some 14,000 sq ft (1,300 sq m) of the Walker’s sublime Edward Larrabee Barnes-designed building, the exhibition opens in a psychedelic swirl of spheres, mandalas, mantras, and the altered states imagined by Ettore Sottsass in his out-of-this-world The Planet as Festival lithographs of 1971 before delving into the concepts of radical architectural groups such as Archigram and Ant Farm, who proposed better living through pods and inflatables such as Michael Webb’s 1966 'Cushicle,' which resembles the love child of a Poul Kjærholm chaise and a geodesic dome.

The 'Tune In' section is concerned with 'the interconnectedness of communities of interest', explains Blauvelt, who brought together original printed matter ('the Internet of its time') ranging from gig posters and protest flyers to countercultural periodicals such as Scanlan’s, a short-lived source of proto-gonzo journalism and a pioneer of infographics. An installation by Ken Isaacs immerses the viewer in images from Life and Look magazines that are projected onto six surfaces of The Knowledge Box (1962/2009), prefiguring today’s Instagram age.

The show’s final section turns its back on the mainstream, exploring the worlds of schemers and dreamers like The Cockettes, a post-Haight commune that gave birth to glitter rock. Another room is strung with the colourful hammocks of Neville d’Almeida and Helio Oiticica’s 1973 take on a Hendrix experience (lounging is encouraged), while the knitted dwelling of fibre artist Evelyn Roth is positioned not far from a copy of Computer Lib, the 1974 book in which Ted Nelson introduces the concept of hypertext and the 'deeply intertwingled' nature of personal computing.

The big finish is Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison’s Portable Orchard: 18 semi-dwarf citrus trees growing in hexagonal wooden boxes under artificial lights. The installation recreates a 1972 work undertaken by the Harrisons in California as a response to the rampant razing of orchards and farms to make way for suburban development. For Blauvelt, their 'cybernetic orange grove' is one more example of the transient reconciliation between the hippie and the modernist: a crossing of divergent paths, both bound for utopia. 'On the one hand it looks almost like a minimalist installation,' he says, walking amid the fragrant trees. 'But on the other hand it has everything to do with concerns about planetary survival.'

INFORMATION

’Hippie Modernism’ is on view until 28 February 2016. For more information, visit Walker Art Center’s website

ADDRESS

Walker Art Center
1750 Hennepin Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55403

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For the first time ever in the US, Friedman Benda gallery in New York is displaying Ettore Sottsass’ diverse early-career oeuvre of cermaics, furniture, lighting and photographs. Pictured: Marc Benda, holding a vase from the Tenebre Series, designed by Sottsass in 1963. Also by Sottsass, from left, ’Califfo’ sofa, 1965; ’Offerta a Shiva’ plates, 1964; Library, 1965; vases from Lava Series, 1957, Rocchetti Series, 1957–1959, and Tenebre series, 1957–1959

Looking back on his early experiments with ceramics, Ettore Sottsass recalled mucking about in the 1950s with crude Tuscan clay and cold overglaze enamels – materials that connected him to a tradition of wares ‘made for eating pea soup and potatoes on the large wooden tables of convents in the Sienese hills’. The experience pulled him further away from modernism’s refined rationality and closer to humanity – vital yet fragile, alive but imperfect. ‘I began to think that if there was a reason for designing objects,’ wrote the Italian architect and designer in Domus, ‘it was in one way or another to help people live.’

Some fruits of that epiphany are now going on display in the US for the first time in a major exhibition at the newly renovated Friedman Benda gallery in New York. Ten years in the making, the show serves up a rarely seen portion of Sottsass’ diverse output: ceramics, furniture, lighting and photographs from the early stages of his career. Previously only available to institutions, many of the approximately 100 works, which date from 1955 through to 1969, have never before been offered for sale. The show is the result of a decade of hunting down important collections of Sottsass’ work and homes he designed as well as a close collaboration with his estate, which decided several years ago to begin selling selected works, initially exclusively to museums. ‘We are looking for both institutional and private buyers with this exhibition,’ says Marc Benda, who founded the Manhattan gallery with Barry Friedman in 2007. ‘The show should serve to broaden the appreciation and connoisseurship of a discerning collecting audience, but also a wider public.’

A summer makeover has unified Friedman Benda’s Chelsea base, creating a single open space and adding two large windows that open to the street. The more compact arrangement brings a new intimacy to the gallery. ‘It was very much a conscious decision to make the space a bit smaller,’ explains Benda. ‘We want designers to design tight shows.’ The choice to unveil the refurbished space with a Sottsass show was also a deliberate one. ‘He is part of the DNA of the gallery,’ says Benda, who has mounted several previous shows of the designer’s work. ‘I wanted to see the early work in its own context, and when we started putting this exhibition together, we realised that a completely different Sottsass emerged. I think this show will shatter people’s expectations.’

Most surprised will be those who know Sottsass only as the man behind the cherry red Olivetti ‘Valentine’ typewriter of 1969 or as the godfather of the Memphis group, the bright and colourful reinvigoration of Italy’s Radical Design movement. ‘It’s good to remember that he was 64 – nearly retirement age – when Memphis was launched in 1981,’ explains Glenn Adamson, director of New York’s Museum of Arts and Design. ‘It was really a late manoeuvre in a long career, and to the extent that it was an ironic “anti-design” project, it only came after many strongly felt works from earlier years.’

Among those works are the approximately 50 ceramic pieces that are the cornerstone of the exhibition. Discrete sets each attributable to a single year, they show Sottsass exploring form and colour, embracing craft with the humble terracotta he likened to human flesh, and then defying it through the use of industrial enamels. ‘He would collaborate with artisans and companies that would provide the know-how,’ says Benda, ‘but he took this millennia-old material and made things that fit in nowhere but his own vision.’

With ceramics, Sottsass found a way to rediscover archetypal forms: many of his works from the 1950s and 1960s have a symbolic or totemic quality, from the lighting and mirrors he designed for Arredoluce to a sideboard made graphic by rosewood slats. ‘These laid the pathway to postmodern compositional technique, though the vivid juxtaposition of volumes, patterns and colours,’ says Adamson.

Sustaining and enhancing these bold combinations is a mastery of proportions, itself the product of complex decision making. ‘He did everything with intention. Nothing was unconsidered, from the way he arranged the objects on his desk, to the way he dressed, to how he chose the right pencil to draw with, to the consideration of where we all met for lunch,’ says David Kelley, co-founder of design firm Ideo, who counted Sottsass as both a colleague and a friend (and an architect: Kelley lives in a Californian home designed for him by Sottsass Associati). ‘He enjoyed making and designing all these decisions. And from him, I learned how to savour these normal everyday life occurrences.’

This unique combination of decisiveness and playfulness is especially apparent in the interiors and furnishings Sottsass designed during this period. Often enlivened by wall compositions that combined paintings and ceramics, the spaces alternated surfaces and colours in what he once described as ‘an essentially colourful and graphic game, which no longer reflects a structural idea’. The focus at Friedman Benda will be the modular, colourful components of these spaces. Rather than recreate the rooms immortalised in Domus, ‘the exhibition will centre on the works themselves,’ notes Benda, ‘in a contemporary context’.

For the home of a director at Olivetti he created a unique wall-mounted bookcase that Benda snagged for the show. Massive yet somehow sprightly in lacquered wood and walnut, the 1965 design keeps a row of tall, extruded lines in dialogue with human scale. ‘There are certain tenets of modernism that he retains at this moment, but he fiddles with proportions in a way that makes it his own,’ says Benda. ‘With this bookcase, he plays with the vertical versus horizontal in a way that the Scandinavians would never even think of.’

The energy that courses through Sottsass’ work is all the more remarkable for its synthesis and integration of influences – the Dolomites of his childhood, his architectural training, encounters with the likes of Picasso and Ernst, travels in India and North Africa, a stint working for George Nelson, a protracted hospital stay in California – in a way that produces something entirely new, free of apparent references. ‘He’s infusing different cultures, personal experiences. I wanted to mine the enormous amount of information that was left to us and that hasn’t really been attacked,’ says Benda. ‘This is the most intimate show I’ve ever done; it’s almost a dialogue with him.’

‘For many of us in the industrial design profession, Ettore’s legacy will always be that he led a movement that said it’s OK to have fun with what you design,’ says Kelley. ‘He gave us the permission to be personally expressive with what we designed and to make things more human, less rational, and more playful. He taught us that our designs could be less rule-based, imperfect, and messy, and that this approach to design would make people more vital and comfortable. Life is messy and design can also be messy. Our lives could be just a little bit more enjoyable lived Ettore’s way.’

As originally featured in the October 2015 edition of Wallpaper* (W*199)

INFORMATION

‘Ettore Sottsass 1955–1969’ is on view at Friedman Benda until 17 October

Photography: Daniel Shea

ADDRESS

Friedman Benda
515 W 26th Street
New York, NY 10001

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It's not often that designers confess their crushes but Gala Fernández comes straight out with it. 'I met Ettore Sottsass at a lecture he did in Milano in 1994. I was studying at the Istituto Europeo di Design at the time. I was already a fan, but that conference was so touching. I waited until the end and went to talk to him. I fell in love with him,' she laughs. Sottsass was 67 at the time, Fernández a young Spanish student who now runs her own studio, PioPio Design Labs in Mexico City.

Last year, in homage (at first, subconsciously) to her hero, Fernández started working on a series of 16 little sculptures that combine Mexican marble, onyx and stone. Entitled 'Caro Ettore', the objects form part of 'This Is Not A Duet' - a joint exhibition with Sung Jang, curated by Maria Cristina Didero and Juan Garcia Mosqueda - for Chamber NYC, a design art gallery that launched with a buzz during last year's ICFF. Fernández has also created 'Little Games,' a wooden box measuring 50x50x30cm that contains a further 32 pieces that can be arranged in various ways to create your own sculptures. Fernández is a self-confessed 'global nomad', who specialises in working with local artisans and materials; 'Caro Ettore' started out as an exploration into Mexican minerals. 

Another of Fernández's heroes is German artist Karl Blossfeldt whose black and white close-ups of plants and flowers set a new standard in botanical photography. Taking his abstract, slightly surreal forms, Fernández has created a collection of nine vases in felt and marble for Mexican felt specialists Feltum, who are exhibiting at WantedDesign. Intricate, hand stitched petals and leaves in grey felt curl around black and white marble cylinders. Feltum's mission is to reinvent wool felt as an architectural material, and Fernández's felt petals make a surprisingly durable and tough argument for it. And like everything else that comes out of the PioPio studio, they are all hand made in Mexico. 

ADDRESS

Chamber
515 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10001

WantedDesign
Terminal Stores Building
271 11th Ave,
New York, NY 10001

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A renewed affection for the Memphis Group's quirky, postmodern aesthetic has kept its hold on the design community for a good while now, and there are no signs of any slowing, especially with the latest project from Kartell this week. The design company's newest collection is made up of never-before-seen products by the one and only Ettore Sottsass. Designed in 2004 for Kartell but never produced, the energetic collection, which includes four vases, three tabouret stools and one lamp, is as colourful and true to the design icon's style as one could ever hope for.

Intended as a complete collection by Sottsass, who died in 2007, the eight pieces were conceived to symbolise his return to industrial design. Kartell's president Claudio Luti says, 'When we invited Ettore Sottsass to design some objects for us, we agreed that the interesting side to our collaboration would be marking a sort of "return to industrial design" for Sottsass. His name has always been more linked to the idea of unique pieces.

'The brief was to express the post-futurist aesthetic, typical of Sottsass, by means of an industrial project. The challenge was to use plastic materials and technologies, like injection, to create decorative accessories like vases and more functional pieces, such as stools.'

About collaborating with a design master such as Sottsass, Luti recalls, 'It was a very stimulating exchange. I clearly remember his highly intellectual approach and at the same time, a very understated, spontaneous attitude. I felt honoured to sit down at the same table, and at the same time my wish was to translate his ideas and iconic design into real Kartell industrial products.'

Despite working on the collection with Sottsass from 2004 to 2005, Kartell chose not to bring the collection to life because of technology constraints at the time. So demanding are some of the concepts that even with the use of highly advanced injection techniques today, the collection's more decorative and complex silhouettes are still being evaluated on whether they can be ultimately produced. However, the 'Calice' vase and 'Pilastro' and 'Colonna' stools will definitely be brought to market, with others to come in the near future.

Luti says, 'Modern technology now allows us to produce the Sottsass designs to a standard and level of sophistication that we would not have managed ten years ago. I am convinced that Sottsass himself would have been a huge fan of how we have brought his objects to life. Their unique, unmistakable look will set them apart in their industrial, international future.'

To celebrate this momentous collection's debut, Kartell has transformed its Milanese flagship boutique into a spatial tribute to the Memphis design movement. In addition to transforming the space with a vibrant, patterned setting designed by Ferruccio Laviani to introduce the new designs, Kartell has collaborated with Memphis Group members like Nathalie du Pasquier and George Sowden to upholster chairs, including Philippe Starck's 'Mademoiselle', 'Foliage' by Patricia Urquiola and 'Trix' by Piero Lissoni, for a new Pop look. Together, it's a joyous testament to Italy's design heritage and its present.

ADDRESS 

Kartell
via Filippo Turati 5
Milano

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'The night we launched Memphis, during the Salone del Mobile, we could not believe that the road in front of the showroom had to be closed after an hour, because so many people were on the street,' designer Matteo Thun told Wallpaper* in 2011 on the occasion of the group's thirtieth anniversary, adding, 'We did not intend to shock at all!'

Known for its Fisher-Price hues, bulbous curves, asymmetrical shapes and graphic structural forms, the movement has been making a steady comeback for some time now but, with a slew of recent exhibitions, and a new monograph by Phaidon celebrating the life and work of Memphis founder Ettore Sottsass (1917-2007), the creative industries are again in the colourful throws of a Memphis moment. Not only are archive pieces being given the spotlight once more, Memphis is also inspiring fresh works from a host of contemporary architects, painters and fashion designers.

This year's Salone del Mobile kicked off proceedings with 'La Collezione Memphis alle Stelline' at Galleria Gruppo Credito Valtellinese, offering the largest museum exhibition of Memphis ever presented in its birthplace of Milan. The event was such a success that it's to be shown again at the Pila Gallery from the 1-29 June. This showcase was also tied to Milanese furniture designer Giacomo Moor's 'Metropolis' presentation at Post Design, which is the brand name under which Memphis Company produces its new collections, and the gallery that exhibits Memphis' productions.

Jumping to Paris, the celebrations continued with French architect Charles Zana's staging of 'Vasi e Fiore', a curated collection of vases realised by the Memphis group and shown at Paris' Musée Delacroix. 'I discovered the Memphis movement while I was studying architecture,' explains Zana. 'Memphis is a true revolution in the world of design. It opened the way for new forms of design in the 1990s, distancing function and causing a more artistic attitude.'

The road to Memphis was forged in 1981 by Sottsass, and over the years involved up to 20 designers who shared his Post Modern aspirations, creating furniture, objects, fabrics, ceramics and buildings that sat somewhere between the realms of kitsch and futurism, quickly becoming a brash badge for 'New Design'.

Moving past Art Deco and Pop Art, the group admired the Bauhaus, but felt limited by their principals, and was perhaps best known for its colourful assault on interiors. This bold aesthetic has recently been referenced in American artist Hernan Bas' new exhibition titled, 'Memphis Living', on show at London's Victoria Miro gallery until 31 May. In his painting series Bas incorporates key design elements of the movement's aesthetic that he first encountered through pop culture references in his youth. 'In my opinion, living "Memphis" means more than a love of bright colours, pattern and uncomfortable seating,' Bas reflects. 'It was an impassioned moment, a daring, bold-formed and wildly influential movement that is just catching our rear-view attention again.'

The fashion industry is similarly making sure Memphis has our full attention. American Apparel recently collaborated with core member, artist Nathalie du Pasquier on a 43-piece summer collection that's lavished with her graphic prints.

On the Spring/Summer 2014 runways, both Céline and Alexander McQueen embraced the movement's Mobilo-hued primary palette, while dizzying optical graphics were seen at Marc by Marc Jacobs, Opening Ceremony and Roland Mouret. Upping the showmanship, Karl Lagerfeld's Chanel 'art gallery' was dotted with Memphis-style sculptures - no doubt a throw back to his former Monaco apartment that was entirely clad in Memphis. Come Autumn/Winter 2014, Proenza Schouler also looked to the movement's upbeat energy and light-hearted humour, manifested in the show's onslaught of trippy graphics on pattern-blocked coats and dresses.

Sottsass may have left the group in 1985, with it disbandoning by 1988, but the Memphis legacy certainly lives on, culminating with an upcoming talk by his wife Barbara Radice at London's Design Museum, offering an intimate insight into the world of one of the twentieth century's most revered design-thinkers and influencers.

Jewellery is rarely the focus of major exhibitions at prominent galleries. This year has been different, with standalone exhibtions from Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels being staged in museums across Europe. Adding to that this week, and somewhat at the opposite end of the scale, is 'Unexpected Pleasures: The Art and Design of Contemporary Jewellery', at the Design Museum in London.

Rather than look only at what’s new in contemporary jewellery – a movement that, roughly, aims to place jewels in a social context – the show is a celebration featuring around 200 pieces from jewelers and designers from the 1960s to today. So, alongside art-jeweller stalwarts such as British designer Wendy Ramshaw’s interlocking rings of gold and silver, are pan-decade designs such as Gijs Bakker’s Porsche bracelet in Polyurethane, Pierre Cardin’s mobile-style acrylic necklace and Manon van Kouswijk’s poppy paper pearls.

That means that there are some absolute crackers on show – Ramshaw’s 1988 'Rings for Woman in an Armchair', for instance, are brilliantly modern, beautiful and curious, and her influence pervades throughout the exhibition. Ettore Sottsass’ 1967 graphic necklace of gold, quartz and onyx is equally compelling. 

Of the new names featured, Japan’s Toru Yoshikawa’s Ribbonesia project’s origami-like grosgrain-ribbon fox is a standout piece, its simplicity, tone and texture imbuing it with a feeling of preciousness. Alexander Blank’s darkly considered response to the proliferation of ‘animal’ jewellery, 'Ed’s Friend Duck' in foam, silver, Perspex and lacquer is also so carefully conceived and realized, especially in his creative use of materials, as to make much of the rest of the jewellery on show appear dated and lacking in originality. 

It’s a good thing to consider jewellery from a more conceptual, design-led perspective but while the ambition of the expert curator, Australian designer and maker Dr. Susan Cohn, to show contemporary jewellery from every angle, is a bold one, the result is a sprawling mélange of objects that, as a whole, somehow seems to lack contemporary context. That said, every visitor will find something to delight, surprise and inspire further thought here.

ADDRESS

Design Museum
Shad Thames
London SE1 2YD

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