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02.13.24

Q+A

Artist Chidy Wayne on How Doubt and Uncertainty Guide His Hand

Barcelona-based artist Chidy Wayne boasts an assured hand, honed from years of sketching as a former fashion designer and from working for over a decade as an illustrator commissioned by big brands like Nike and Kinfolk. But his gestural paintings often start from a place of naïveté: “I close my eyes and pretend I can’t draw to truly connect with myself,” he admits.
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10.20.22

Sighted

In His First Work of Architecture — A Country HQ for Kvadrat — Thomas Demand Takes Inspiration From the Page

Known for his highly nuanced, opaque, anything-but-straightforward photographs of cinematically lit, full-scale sets made of paper, artist Thomas Demand’s latest project is an incredibly literal work of architecture that appears like a paper construction. The pavilion — done in partnership with Caruso St John Architects as part of the textile manufacturer Kvadrat’s headquarters in coastal Ebeltoft, Denmark — follows, as the artist says “the logic of paper."
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12.14.21

Sighted

The Swedish Illustrator Inspired By Classical Figures and Scandinavian Florals

For Sweden-born, London-based illustrator and artist Petra Börner — known for her ink and watercolor images of bright, graphic florals, meandering foliage, and Grecian-inspired figures — nature is a source of both inspiration and consternation. "Living in the city, we're very cut off from nature,” she says. Perhaps this is why flora and fauna are so prominent in her paper cut-outs, paintings, collages, ceramics, and prints.
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09.03.21

Up and Coming

This Seeded Glass Coffee Table is the Star of Courtney Applebaum’s New Furniture Collection

Inspired by an eclectic range of periods and sources — from the ancient world to Art Deco, antiques to high design — interior designer Courtney Applebaum rarely sources contemporary pieces for her interiors. “We really only use vintage. Everything else, we make,” says Applebaum. So, it only made sense for the designer to finally create her first namesake furniture collection: a series of terracotta and raffia sconces, terracotta lamps, and a glass coffee table, with more pieces on the way.
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06.21.21

Excerpt: Exhibition

You’ll Never Guess Which California Town is Undergoing an Art Renaissance — Thanks, In Part, to This New Artist-Run Gallery

Here at Sight Unseen, we could of course rattle off a long list of renowned, influential city centers for art and design: Berlin, Mexico City, Seoul, Copenhagen, New York and more. But lately, Long Beach, California, has landed on our radar — yes, you heard right, Long Beach, home to the Queen Mary and Snoop Dogg, where, later this summer, a new art gallery called In Various Forms will open.
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05.12.21

Up and Coming

The Old is New in Gippeum Roh’s Still Life–Inspired Paintings and Ceramics

Gippeum Roh’s paintings have the flattened perspective of Cézanne’s apples, the muted color palette and tight interlocking composition of a Giorgio Morandi still life, and a hint of the sensuousness of Georgia O’Keeffe’s flowers and landscapes. Asked about the source of her visual repertoire, Roh says, “My painting is about the everyday things that I bring to my studio. I collect things and place them, just as in the long tradition of still life painting. Light and shadow; natural, cool or warm light play an important role in revealing the appearance and essence of objects.”
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03.29.21

Sighted

Sarah Ellison’s Stand Out New Collection Features the Stripe

A bold Memphis sensibility meets sunny Byron Bay ease in Australian designer Sarah Ellison’s new capsule collection “La Banda,” meaning “the stripe” in Italian. Bands of ash and walnut wood lay next to each other to create a striped pattern, and rounded and rectilinear silhouettes playfully and unexpectedly alternate. In fashion, the notion of “the stripe” has a rich and varied history — a history that Ellison, a former fashion designer and stylist, was no doubt aware of.
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02.22.21

Excerpt: Book

Ken Miller’s New Book Pictures Photography Anew

A new volume by editor and curator Ken Miller celebrates photography not for the referential images it can capture, but for the possibilities of the medium in and of itself. Titled PICTURES, the book celebrates non-representational photography, and it’s a formal announcement of sorts that photographs, as an art form, have come into a category all their own and not just in service of documentation, representation, or narrative.
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