A Swedish Artist’s Gravity-Defying Stone Sculptures

Swedish artist Malou Palmqvist's wabi-sabi stacks of organic shapes are a studied interpretation of the scattered pieces of waste that wash ashore near her home in the Swedish archipelago. The textured forms — stoneware, wood carvings, and combinations of stone with plaster to create a marbled effect — are at once hefty and delicate, subtly clashing and full of whimsy.
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This Modular Furniture Collection Might Unglue You From Your Phone

Kusheda Mensah is a British-born Ghanaian designer, based in London, whose Modular by Mensah Mutual collection began from the realization that face-to-face interaction is deteriorating from the rise of social media. As an "artistic remedy," Mensah developed 20 interlocking modular pieces of furniture, representing the closeness and connection shared between humans, as well as the human form itself.
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The Finnish Designer Using a Traditional Moroccan Wall-Surfacing Technique to Make Furniture

Amsterdam-based designer Tuomas Markunpoika aims for “tedious functionality” in his designs, but to us there is mystery and wonder in the bulbous, colorful slabs of material that compose his furniture. His new series of works is called “Contra Naturam,” or against nature — a mauve bench, a coffee table and chair in grayish and springy greens, and a side table and console in pale yellow and cream. Each looks cut from the earth or plucked from a stage set, at once natural and totally fake.
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Brutalist-inspire ikebana vases by Studio Testo

These Brutalist-Inspired Vases Will Up Your Ikebana Game

Last time we featured Studio Testo, we noted Giulia Dolci and Giulia Fauro Alessi’s uncanny ability to make pieces that are on-trend and effortlessly cool. So it comes as no surprise that their latest collection of sculptural vases has a similarly refreshing vibe, taking cues from Brutalist architecture and adding in some ikebana by Irene Cuzzaniti and fresh textiles by AH/OK.
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These Colorful, Abstract Bath Towels Just Shot to the Top Of Our Wish List

We first came across this amazing intersection of art and terry cloth — a.k.a. the most delightful beach and bath towels ever made — a few months ago, and we still can’t get them out of our heads. Created by the Zurich-based company Frottee di Mare — whose name is a mix between the German word for towel and the Italian concept of la dolce vita — the reversible towels feature shapes and colors inspired by gelato and the Calabrian sun.
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A New Furniture Collection Highlights the Color-Shifting Magic of Car Paint

A new exhibition at A Plus A Gallery in Venice, Italy, brings together artists and designers Richard Wheater, Jochen Holz, and M–L–XL in conjunction with this summer's architecture biennale. Wheater’s neon installations show off light and shapes as much as the cords and electricity themselves; Holz’s neon lights and glass objects are wild and free, with bulges and tubes composing cartoon-like moments. But the real star here is M-L-XL's new furniture collection, inspired by everyday extruded metal L-profiles and painted with holographic car paint.
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A 3D-Rendered Dreamscape in Inescapably Pleasing Pink

“A Lucid Dream in Pink, Sleep Cycle No 1­7,” by Swedish art director Anders Brasch-Willumsen, combines balloon-like lights, terrazzo surfaces, and occasional plants in spaces that could be galleries and showrooms just as easily as they could exist in the mind.
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At Morgan Lehman, Two Artists Exploring the Slippery Nature of Spatial Perception

Seeing the work of photographer Erin O'Keefe and painter Matt Kleberg side by side, it’s as if they are of one mind: the brightest orangey reds, the richest teals and greens, and the textured yellows; the crisp angles, the unexpected shapes, and the lively abstractions. Their current collaboration, a two-person exhibition titled Ecstatic Vernacular on view at Morgan Lehman in New York until May 19, is a conversation between the artists and their differing mediums.
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A South African Showroom With a Perfect, Pink Tiled Facade

Little is known about the history of 99 Juta Street — an 80-odd year old multi-use development in Johannesburg that was recently brought back to life by designers Dokter and Misses in collaboration with architects Local Studio; the original plans were lost, and with them, any record of the building's original use or exact age. When work began, 99 Juta was in disrepair and concealed behind a fiber cement cladding; now it boasts a poppy, tiled, Art Deco facade in pink and emerald green, as well as four showrooms and office spaces for various design brands and two inner courtyards that create a through line of color and intrigue.
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