Tatiana Trouvé: The detailed paintings and room installations of the Italian-born, Paris-based artist Tatiana Trouvé are supposed to make you feel a bit ill-at-ease — they’re essentially bizarre unoccupied interiors from a parallel world, where the furnishings are at once familiar and all wrong. But that slightly haunting, absurd, or off-kilter feeling really moves me, and it influences my taste in design as well. The Surrealists took the idea to an extreme of high camp and shock value, but some of the most skilled contemporary designers — like Maarten Baas, for instance — know how to harness it to make beautiful objects.