A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: Tim Teven’s excellent iridescent furniture, Meaghan Roddy’s inspiring textile exhibition at Volume Gallery in Chicago, and did anyone else not know about Greta Garbo’s ties to Swedish design?! 

Exhibitions

The experimental approach that Dutch designer Tim Teven takes relies on mechanical precision as much as chance. For the Tube collection, Teven presses and bends uniform steel tubes, reshaping them or “de-forming” them to make stools, benches, table or chair legs. His work was recently part of the group show Monumental Mass at Galerija Vartai in Vilnius, Lithuania and a solo show at Housewarming in Antwerp. Photos © Pierre Castignola

Terri Friedman

Josh Faught

Terri Friedman

Jana Van Der Lee

Terri Friedman

At Chicago’s Volume gallery, a multi-generational group show curated by former Phillips design expert and craft specialist Meaghan Roddy brings together nine American fiber artists – Tanya Aguiñiga, Lia Cook, Ricki Dwyer, Josh Faught, Terri Friedman, Ferne Jacobs, Michael Rohde, SHENEQUA, and Jana Vander Lee. Placing these textile works in conversation with each other, Apex creates new contexts and connections. Through February 17th.

Rachel Shillander

Hyanuko

Sam Klemick

Kelby Lee Singhaus

Christopher Norman

Lightforms, featuring the work of 11 artists at the Rhett Baruch gallery in LA, is perfectly timed to illuminate the winter darkness. The sculptural lighting on display includes Rachel Shillander’s Psychedahlia verdigris copper floor lamp and copper torchiere, Jonny Sakhai’s No. 4 aluminum wall light, Sam Klemick’s Ribbon Light, in which hand-sculpted pine appears to be draping a milk glass shade, Leonard Bessemer’s Palm Monday sconces made of engineered stone, Haley Ann Bradley’s portal-like Sky Space lamp, Kelby Lee Singhaus’s mahogany and paper lights that resemble lungs and a sailboat, along with works by Austin Kahn, Christopher Norman, Hyunuko, Tristan Marsh, and James Mitchell. Through January 20th. Photos © Neill Bachand

The Garbo Talks exhibition at TriBeCa’s Galerie56, curated by architect Lee F. Mindel of SheltonMindel and Swedish gallery Jackson Design, pays homage to the Swedish star (who also became an avid art collector) through design. Featuring over 50 modernist pieces, from the 1930 through the 1970s, the show includes works by Verner Panton, Josef Frank, Axel Einar Hjorth, and lighting by Jean Royère, among many others. Through January 22.

Interiors

Beige doesn’t have to mean boring. It’s anything but at the new Athletic Propulsion Labs store in Soho, New York. London-based architectural studio Al-Jawad Pike handled design for the LA-based luxury sneakers brand, skillfully executing a brief of “simple yet severe.” Three central tear-drop shaped columns in the semi-circular main space encourage the customer to walk around and explore; sandy textured plaster covers the walls and columns, while back-lit stretched fabric spans the ceiling, allowing changeable mood lighting. Stone gets its moment in the travertine floor, boulder-like display plinths, and five spaces toward the back of the store, clad in onyx or marble. Sneakers, of course, are the main event here, displayed in illuminated, champagne-colored, anodized aluminum boxes. The effect is a like futuristic but classical temple devoted to footwear. Photos © Stale Eriksen

Discoveries

For the new Folk and Flora collection from Troy Lighting, artist and vintage curator Carmen Nash of Loft and Thought conceived of her lamp designs as visual renderings or re-imaginings of favorite passages from writers and storytellers – with the idea that stories connect us to objects. The Morri lamp, with a wooden base and wrought iron neck, is Nash’s tribute to one of America’s greatest novelists, Toni Morrison, and the Pezante was designed to honor of the matriarchal figure in Julie Dash’s groundbreaking film Daughters of the Dust.

For artist Jesse Groom, welding is a decorative act, not simply a functional technique. With the ongoing series Cicatrix (which means the scar of a healed wound), a time- and labor-intensive process results in a sculptural chair and through heat and effort, aluminum acquires a delicate, almost fabric-like appearance.

Lamp N.1, a collaboration between Marseille-based designer-artists Sybille Berger and Mélissa Mariller, is an exemplary take on upcycling scraps and discards. The boxy exterior consists of wool and nylon Kvardrat fabric panels while the feet and fasteners made of thrifted tin from saucers, soup tureens, carafes, melted and cast into spirals.

The relationship between the MoMA Design Store and the housewares brand BODUM goes back over 30 years and continues to grow. To celebrate BODUM’s 80th anniversary and a new licensing agreement, the BODUM Bistro Pop-Up opened this month at the Design Store’s two New York locations and online. New products – and new takes on classics – include a dyed glass set of the Pavina double-walled glasses, along with the Jazz porcelain mugs to go with the new Jazz porcelain dinnerware that debuted last year, coffee makers (programmable as well as pour over) and a special edition French press set.

House of Today, a non-profit for promoting and expanding Lebanese design, recently released the Candle Project, featuring the work of 10 Lebanese designers – Nada Debs, Carla Baz, Richard Yasmine, 200Grs, Aline Asmar d’Amman, david/nicolas, Flavie Audi, Sayar & Garibeh, LimbObject, and Tamara Barrage. You could call them candles – they light, burn, and melt – but you could also call them wax sculptures. The Candle Project marks the first time any of these designers had worked with wax as a final medium. As part of House of Today’s mission, the limited-edition series was produced by wax workers at Beit Chabeb, a hospital for the disabled that has artisanal workshop spaces.