Design Miami/ Basel opens next week with an exciting Gallery program that balances contemporary practice at its most cutting edge, with strong historic works by some of the world’s leading designers and craft ateliers. More than 50 galleries from 13 different countries will participate in this year’s fair. Here is a look at this June’s Gallery highlights and themes.
Ancient Materials
Deploying ancient techniques for working with volcanic materials developed in the Mount Etna region of Sicily, Formafantasma’s De Natura Fossilium melds starkly contemporary forms with vital and expressive materials. Jewelry works by the artist Rebecca Horn likewise combine ancient materials and craft methods to new ends – fossilized snail shells are set using Etruscan-influenced lapidary to create spiritually potent new works. Fur, feathers, leather, cording and the symbolic arsenal of the shaman find their place in the works of young Icelandic designer Brynjar Sigurðarson, whose pieces for the home owe perhaps as much of a debt to anthropology as they do to design history. At the more purely sculptural end of the scale, Rowan Mersh uses tiny, tubular, tusk-shaped dentalium shells to create captivating architectural elements.
De Natura Fossilium (2014) by Formafantasma
Gallery Libby Sellers
Placuna (2014) by Rowan Mersh
Gallery FUMI
Exchange between East and West
From the meticulous embroidery and trompe l’oeil of Danful Yang’s Packing Me Softly stools, to the beautifully balanced kinetic energy of Reinier Bosch’s Hurricane and Skirt tables, to the fine porcelain of Bouke de Vries’s knowing modern figurines, Chinese craftsmanship brings a refined edge to contemporary design. The meshing of ancient and modern is also celebrated in the slick curves of Satyendra Pakhalé’s Roll Chair, which marries a ceramic body to a carbon fiber surface. Studio ceramics has long been the field of fruitful cultural exchange between Asian and European techniques; and tradition continued in the beautifully ‘monstrous’ forms of the young Japanese designer maker Takuro Kuwata. Antique orientalist works shown by Steinitz and Jason Jacques Inc. hint at the long heritage behind this East-West fascination.
Hurricane (2014) by Reinier Bosch
Pearl Lam Galleries
Bowl (2013) by Takuro Kuwata
Pierre Marie Giraud
Between Sculpture and Design
Art Deco’s investigation of the sculptural possibilities of the machine age carried from architecture and sculpture through to domestic furniture and started a formal dialogue that stretched the length of the twentieth century. The rich interchange between the formal innovation that design has gained from sculpture, and the aesthetic of technical functionality that sculpture has fetishized in design is celebrated in this year’s Design Miami/ Basel, with works including Yonel Lebovici’s surreal Les Mains Chaude (1979) and Péter Pierre Székely’s anthropomorphic Bar (1950). The theme of Surrealism is picked up again in Claude Lalanne’s work, in which forms from the natural world are put to whimsical use as furniture, sculpture and jewelry.
Les Mains Chaude (1979) by Yonel Lebovici
Galerie Chastel-Maréchal
Untitled (necklace) by Claude Lalanne
Louisa Guinness Gallery
Extraordinary Provenance
While storytelling has become an increasingly important feature of contemporary design, twentieth-century works have their stories to tell too, such as the Trapèze table (1954-56) by Jean Prouvé. Designed for the Résidence Universitaire Jean-Zay in Antony, France, the name references the distinctive shape of the table’s paired legs and broad tabletop edges. A tribute to French designer René-Jean Caillette will include several unique works and rare prototypes acquired from the designer’s estate – many of which have never previously been exhibited. Other exceptional modern works on exhibition include the Minguren III table by George Nakashima, which was commissioned in 1976, and Jean Royère’s rare Liane floor lamp (c. 1955).
Trapèze table (1954-56) by Jean Prouvé
Jousse Enterprise
Liane floor lamp (c. 1960) by Jean Royère
Galerie Jacques Lacoste
Works Commissioned for Design Miami/ Basel
This June will see the unveiling of gallery YMER&MALTA’s Marquetry: The Sleeping Beauty collection, for which French designers Sebastian Bergne, Benjamin Graindorge, Normal Studio and Sylvain Rieu-Piquet have been asked to collaborate with a Parisian Master craftsman to imagine new, contemporary approaches to marquetry. Carpenters Workshop Gallery has commissioned new pieces from a number of artists, including provocative South African conceptualist Kendell Geers. Other hotly anticipated commissions include Ramy Fischler’s monumental suspended marble works at Armel Soyer, alufoil laminated pieces by American designer Christopher Schanck at Johnson Trading Gallery, R & Company’s Haas Brothers Sex Room and a new suite of furniture by Studio Job at Mitterrand+Cramer.
Alufoil Chair (2013) by Christopher Schanck
Johnson Trading Gallery
Marquetry: The Sleeping Beauty (2014) by Benjamin Graindorge
YMER&MALTA
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