Colored Sand, Kool-Aid, and the Potential of Materials

Last Saturday, we posted about a group show happening in Copenhagen right now called The Plinth Project. The concept for that show is dead simple — redesign a common piece of exhibition furniture — but the results are rather delightful because the brief gives a close-knit group of designers the opportunity to create something that hews close to their normal aesthetic but feels different enough to be fresh. Group exhibitions like this, which ask a cohort of designers to all respond to the same brief, are far too rare, though, in the American design scene, which often favors solo presentations. That’s perhaps why Chamber Gallery‘s exhibition model, in which an outside curator puts together a few different installments over the course of a year, feels so refreshing. Now on view at Chamber is This Is Today, Matylda Krzykowski’s second installment built around the theme of collage. It includes new work by Soft Baroque, Jonah Takagi, Nick van Woert, Martino Gamper, Victoria Wilmotte, Maiko Gubler, and New Tendency among others; other themes addressed in the objects include “the potential of materials, domestic environment, appropriation of surfaces, unveiled production processes, popular culture, visual seduction, and ancient rituals.”

There are so many pieces to love here — including Soft Baroque’s aluminum-profiled table filled with candy-colored sand and Maiko Gubler’s 3D-printed vessels — but Nick van Woert’s installation might be our favorite: Shelter is made from a mix of resources the artist encounters on a daily basis, including cat litter, hair gel, chlorine, Kool-Aid, joint compound, polyurethane, concrete, Glass, Monster Energy, Muscle Milk, and Tang. Take a look at our picks below, and then be sure to visit the gallery, where the current exhibition will be up through February 18.

PHOTOS BY FRAN PARENTE

Top: Soft Baroque, I will love you forever if you bring desert to my living room, 2016