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1960s Graphics and Ancient Ruins Alike Inspired the New Pedro Reyes Show

On view at Lisson Gallery, monumental sculptures and wall-based mosaics — the latter a first for the Mexico City–based artist Pedro Reyes. © Pedro Reyes, courtesy Lisson Gallery

Pedro Reyes has a new exhibition at Lisson Gallery in New York, and it represents a subtle shift in the Mexico City sculptor’s output. Reyes’s work has always been monumental, and that’s still true — the way he imbues stone with sinew, the immense precision of these sculptures. Confronting the colossal mouth of a jaguar, hand-carved from black tezontle, your own jaw wants to fall open from the effort. But there’s an undercurrent of playfulness here, as well as what seems like a new book of sly references. In one totemic sculpture, Reyes stacks shapes carved from white marble or volcanic rock into a gangly tower resembling giant pull quotes, ripped from the pages of a 1960s-era magazine.

But perhaps the most interesting development is a series of wall-based mosaics made from glass or stone — a first for Reyes. Many of the mosaics pull from similar graphic design influences, but others call to mind the aesthetic of 1980s video games, Q-Bert among them. Our favorite work, called Mitla, replicates the pixelated wave pattern made internet famous by Reyes’s viral pink concrete chairs but which in fact refers to — and is named for — the stone patterns found in the ruins at Mitla, one of the most sacred sites of Zapotec civilization. It’s just another example of how Reyes blurs the line between what is ancient and what is modern, and how he reminds us that art can be meaningful, even refracted through a lens of our own making. Through October 18.

In London, the Joyful Work of a Radical Designer Gets Its Due

Riccardo Dalisi is the subject of a new show at Spazio Leone in London, curated by longtime friends Gennaro Leone and Oscar Piccolo. Photos: Callum Su

Riccardo Dalisi is not a name that’s familiar to most casual design observers — or even, if we’re being honest, to the most encyclopedic design editor. The Iate, radical Italian designer — who worked alongside and often influenced contemporaries like Sottsass and Mendini but never achieved their renown — was a two-time Compasso d’Oro winner. But his work was notoriously hard to pin down, spanning as it does architecture, furniture, objects, community engagement, and public art. Luckily, following a retrospective at the MAXXI museum in Rome, Dalisi is again the subject of a solo show, this time curated by Gennaro Leone of Spazio Leone in collaboration with Oscar Piccolo. Leone and Piccolo being the conduits for Dalisi’s work makes sense; Dalisi’s humanist bent and his slender, whimsical, line-drawn aesthetic is everywhere in the two friends’ shared visual language, not least in the logo design for Leone’s gallery. The show, on view at Spazio Leone until October 26, includes archival material like drawings and sketches, films and furniture. But for anyone not in London, it’s worth doing a deep dive online to understand how to situate Dalisi’s work, from the twinkly Neopolitan coffee pot that remains for sale via Alessi to this honestly epic firetools set — for my money Dalisi’s most interesting work currently available on 1stDibs. (Kudos to the person who snagged this for $250 back in 2016!)

Two of Our Favorite Designers are Launching an Outdoor Furniture Brand

Lounge Chair 500 is the first product from SUN SET®, a new outdoor furniture production line by Kristen Wentrcek and Andrew Zebulon.

Independent design studios have gone so far into the atelier model in recent years that it feels almost subversive at this point to launch a production company. So perhaps it’s fitting that one of the first studios to do so in a long time are oft considered renegades in the design world. Wentrcek Zebulon — whose exploratory practice produces sculptural, often institutional-looking work in materials like rubber, fiberglass, resin, and foam — this week announced the launch of SUN SET®, a new outdoor furniture company that marries the studio’s sculptural approach with large-scale production, all made in the USA. Their first product is the Lounge Chair 500, which pairs a glossy fiberglass base with marine-grade upholstery, and they’re currently at work on an ottoman, side table, and — hopefully — a pool lounger down the line. The aesthetic of the lounge chair should be familiar to anyone who’s ever admired their work, and if it seems surprising that the duo have made this particular pivot, consider that founders Kristen Wentrcek and Andrew Zebulon have long been fascinated with the build-up and eventual breakdown of the American Dream. What better category to explore those ideas than the furniture of decks, swimming pools, backyards — all those places in Cheever stories and Mad Men-esque television shows where domestic dramas play out. Or maybe it was just their chance to have fun. Either way, we’re excited to see what comes next.

POV: You’re a Giant Steel Tent in the Middle of the USM Showroom

Studio LOVEISENOUGH’s installation for USM in New York reframes the Swiss company’s signature system as architecture rather than furniture. Photos: Marco Galloway

I almost didn’t write about the new USM installation by Loren Daye’s Hudson-based studio LOVEISENOUGH. Called The Room You Carry, the installation features what is essentially an extremely sturdy tent, built from standard USM parts — including its signature ball and rod infrastructure — and topped with a canvas canopy. When I saw it in the NYC showroom at a dinner a few weeks ago, the structure didn’t immediately resonate with me. In fact, combined with the dinner — which had an air of Downton Abbey–esque pomp about it, with waiters plating each diner simultaneously and then walking away in a single-file flourish — the whole thing felt disorienting.

Rather than dismiss those feelings, though, I sat with them for a while. Had I been conditioned to expect something traditionally “pretty” in the current design collab climate? I kept returning to the press photos until it finally clicked: Daye’s piece is perhaps the most high-end example of High-Tech design that’s ever existed, a category I notoriously love. An homage to Ken Isaacs. A kind of Centre Pompidou for the soul. If it felt disorienting, wasn’t that a proper response to something that’s meant to be a temporary structure? I don’t think it’s a leap to say that this is what Daye intended: for the whole thing to force you to reframe your perspective in the same way she did when she said: What if we approached the USM Haller system not as furniture, but as architecture?

Maximalism May Come and Go, But the Allure of Patterned Rugs is Forever

Top: The new Key flatweave by Block Shop in Los Angeles. Bottom: Cotswold, part of the new Souvenir Tissés collection by Sibylle de Tavernost and Alma Canovas. Photos: Block Shop and Jeanne Perrotte

You’ll never hear us take issue with the prediction that maximalism is making a return, so we were pleased at the launch of two new patterned rug collections this week. The first was from our friends at Block Shop in Los Angeles, who debuted three embellished wool flat-weaves: a midnight moon pattern, a riff on the classic Greek key motif in a chic brown and the cheeriest cranberry, and a tulip pattern that calls to mind the folk-art florals of 19th-century American quilting traditions as well as mid-century Scandinavian kilims. In Paris, the designer Sibylle de Tavernostalso launched three new styles in collaboration with her childhood friend, the interior designer Alma Canovas. Called Souvenirs Tissés, the collection is made from hand-knotted wool and, while the patterning here is slightly more conservative, the rugs still have a loose, generous feel. Hampton in particular features a kind of manic patterning, all interlocking squares that can just as easily read country kitsch as they do 1970s, DVF-style sex and sport.

Editor’s List

Clockwise from top left

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The Egyptian housewares brand Anut Cairo landed on my radar this week, and it set into motion a theme for this week’s Editor’s List — my eternal love for colored glass. Their Razzaz handblown vase features a rippled rim that gives it a little zing of newness.

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What are you even doing if you’re a furniture company that doesn’t make a portable lamp at this point? Established & Sons recently added another to its catalog with the reworked Gelato light by Carlo Nason, originally designed in the ‘60s as a wired version for the table.

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Not sure when these lamps, which mix a kind of opaline delicacy with the toughness of industrial parts, debuted, but they’re by the up and coming designer Alexandre Veillon. One to watch!

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Cristaseya is a Parisian fashion brand that opens the doors to its online store for only a few weeks each season, but they also typically have really lovely objects. I particularly love this black and cyan Murano glass tumbler — a color combo you don’t usually see.

News

The Harmonious Home, by Rebecca Atwood, offers looking to nature as a prescription for building the color and texture palette of your interior. Photos: Blake Shorter

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The biggest story coming out of Milan Fashion Week, it seems, was Bottega Veneta. The collection debuted a new female creative director, Louise Trotter, who emphasized the label’s craft heritage, deploying materials like swishy recycled fiberglass needles and cotton fisherman’s knit. Bottega has a history of tapping into the design world for its runway sets — from Gaetano Pesce’s sheath-like resin chairs to those animal-shaped beanbags based on a 1968 Zanotta design — and this year was no different. For SS26, the Milanese brand 6AM created cubed seats in hand-blown Murano glass, made in a cast-iron mold that was engraved using a CNC machine.

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Queens-based vintage dealer The Somerset House is decamping to a larger HQ later this month, and this weekend, they’ll host a moving sale in the current showroom. I’m tempted to call dibs on this Stickley-esque striped settee with lollipop pillows, which will be marked down 60 percent at the sale. But considering I have nowhere to put it, it’s anyone’s game.

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The design collab choices made by my musical kings continue to amuse/confound. First there was Red Hot Chili Peppers x Parks Project (whose Yosemite camp blanket frankly slaps). Now The Grateful Dead is teaming up with Pantone to christen two colors scanned from an original pressing of their 1973 live album, History of the Grateful Dead, Volume One (Bear’s Choice). The colors are called Grateful Red and Stealie Blue, which makes sense but is also kind of cringe, although not more cringe than partnering with Vineyard Vines.

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There are so many prescriptive interiors books out there, but one idea we’ve gravitated towards lately is the one espoused by pattern and textile designer Rebecca Atwood in her new book, The Harmonious Home. It teaches you how to use your favorite places in nature as a springboard for the color and texture palette in your home, and while there’s no accompanying online quiz — “are you an ocean/sea/water or a forest/trees/canopy?” — it’s easy enough to identify your predilections!

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Coolest paid high-school internship ever? The Noguchi Museum in New York is offering a teen leadership program for rising juniors and seniors at public high schools in NYC. Through guest artist workshops, staff talks, and off-site field trips, the students will learn about Noguchi and the history of the museum and get paid a $750 stipend to boot. Key Club could never! Applications due this Monday, October 6.