A weekly recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: an exhibition of sherbet-colored interior fantasy paintings; some sexy furniture on show in Luxembourg; highly desirable knitted cactus lights; and a preview of some wild rugs coming to Milan in April.

Exhibitions

Precious by Axel Chay sees the designer rendering his signature tubular shapes in highly polished metals and minerals to luxurious effect. In his previous pieces, Chay used dopamine bright color that felt pop and retro; here, the pared-down material palette hits a historical note. Onyx, agate, marble, selenite and a restrained use of deep cherry are more substantial, heavier, and certainly sexier choices. Rolled tubular aluminium is turned and bent into a ski-legged chair, its disk-like seat seemingly hovering in place. Lamps, mirrors, candlesticks, and a rather suggestive wall relief round out the collection that feels suited to after-dark surroundings. On view at Galerie Liberté in Luxembourg until the end of April. Top photo @pattyneu; object photos @robzaii 

On show at Margot Samel’s Tribeca gallery, British artist Alfie Caine’s first solo show in the States is titled The Chalk Carvers. It tells the story of a very real 60-foot-tall white horse carved into the chalky soil of English grasslands, probably in the 1800s, and the make-believe home of the farmer whom Caine imagined carved it. Carved chalk figures like this can be found around the English countryside, and fascination and folklore surround their origins. Caine is a Cambridge architecture grad, and his paintings of interior and architectural settings bathe the viewer in the fantastical optimism of sherbet hues and a life of picture-perfect domesticity. Architectural elements frame within the frame, and take viewers through imagined settings of stairwells, living rooms, and wintery yards. Peeping through doorways and windows into these gorgeous worlds is transportative and instantly relaxing. Closes March 15. Photos © Matthew Sherman

Camille Henrot’s latest show A Number of Things brings together the celebrated French artist’s new and ongoing ideas in an exhibition that features outsized spindly, globby sculptures, collaged paintings and a pack of mixed-media dogs. Tethered to a lamppost, abandoned dogs shaped in wood, wax and metal gesture lick and bark as they wait for their owners amid arched bronze Abacus sculptures, which loom over visitors with rubber beads nestled in the crooks and curves of their swaying arches. The green floor of the gallery features window pane squares, emulating graph paper and ordering a space filled with Henrot’s cacophony of concepts. On show at Hauser & Wirth New York, through April 15. Photos © Thomas Barret

When photographs of Noches Áridas (Dry Nights), the latest show at design studio AGO Projects‘ Mexico City gallery, came across our desk, we had to know more about the little lighted cacti on display. Created by Kauani, a collaboration between product designer Inés Llasera (formerly of Tornasol Studio) and textile designer Inés Quezada, the duo made dozens of 3D knitted lanterns for the show, inspired by the form and functions of xerophytic plants native to the Americas. Each lantern is unique, some stout and others slim, with knots and embellishments recreating the areoles and spines of cacti. On view through mid-May. 

Discoveries

An interdisciplinary artist who has worked in embroidery, embellishment, and quilt making, Christabel MacGreevy is inspired by the feminist tradition of subverting traditionally “feminine” mediums to carry a message. She more recently began working in ceramics in 2021 during a residency at Ceramica Suro in Guadalajara, Mexico. Her wonderful vessels, urns, vases, and water jugs are made in terracotta and slip-glazed ceramic decorated with caressing figures whose expression and color feel Bloomsbury-esque. Available through Eric Firestone Gallery.

We love unique glassware, partly because it takes away the confusion of whose is whose at parties but also because glassware is often uniform and staid. These glasses buck convention with shapes that bend and melt, whilst maintaining function by standing upright. Brandy glasses bulge and goblets are knotted in the middle like bows. In Company, the studio behind these forms, is based in Cape Town and the glassware is hand-blown in South Africa from borosilicate glass and recycled solar geyser tubes. Drinking water from these is certainly chicer than a Stanley. 

A new collection by a famed interior architect brings his distinct maximalist outlook to rugs. Belgian Gert Voorjans is famed for his modern but highly decorated projects and for designing the stores and home of fellow magpie Dries Van Noten, who shares Voorjans’ love of decadent pattern and color. His rugs, made in collaboration with Carpet Society are a heady and wild mix of abstract designs, engineered floral prints and Bayadere stripes. Handknotted in India and Nepa from jute and New Zealand wool, these carpets will be on view at Fuorisalone in Milan in April. Photos © Thibault De Schepper

You may recognise Sofia Elias’ jewelry designs, which go by the label Blobb. Elias’ bubblegum-bright sculptural rings and bags are blobby by name and nature and have been worn by the likes of Dua Lipa. On the back of her jewelry success, the designer has scaled up her practice, creating furniture and even playgrounds (one of which is now part of a collection in Marfa). The designer’s sticky-looking Pofi Chairs are self-supporting “soft sculptures” that playfully cradle sitters as they collapse under weight. Although the color and form are screen-friendly, the “touch-me” nature of her resin pieces is a real-world wonder. Elias’s studio store is located in Mexico City.