12.18.19
Sight Unseen Presents
Sight Unseen’s 10 Most-Read Stories of 2019
Today we’re counting down the most-loved stories from this year, from the vintage lamps we've been seeing everywhere to the coolest spots in Mexico City.
12.17.19
Excerpt: Exhibition
Two Berlin Artists, On View at a Café Where Brunch Meets Brutalism
The definition of gallery keeps expanding, and perhaps our favorite new entry is the mezzanine of the year-old café Baldon, located inside architect Arno Brandlhuber’s terraced, brutalist Lobe Block building in the Wedding neighborhood of Berlin. On view until the end of the month is a show that combines two artists of recent interest — Kim Bartelt, whose home and studio we featured here earlier this fall, and Yellow Nose, a Berlin-based studio founded in 2017 by two Taiwanese architects, Hsin-Ying Ho and Kai-Ming Tung.
12.13.19
American Design Hot List
Kelly Wearstler Just Won 2020 With Her New Furniture Collection
LA designer Kelly Wearstler has had a big year, from the launch of her first book in 10 years to the rollout of her designs for Proper Hotels — most notably Santa Monica, which has become a major source of Instagram fodder for its chair orgy, its iconic curved headboard, and commissions from young designers like Chris Wolston and Wentrcek/Zebulon. Today we got a peek at her new collection for 2020, and it continues in the same excellent vein
12.12.19
Excerpt: Exhibition
A Mint Green, Foam-Encrusted Desk Suite is the Highlight of This French Painter’s New Exhibition
In the materials list for one of the new works by Paris-born artist Côme Clérino — on view now at Galerie Chloe Salgado — you might find MDF, plaster, acrylic resin, fiberglass, paraffin, fabric, thermoplastic glue, tile seal, ceramic, watercolor, felt pen, and colored pencil. But paint? Hardly, despite the fact that Clérino considers himself foremost a painter.
12.09.19
Current Obsession
This South Korean Furniture Collection Proves Tiny Pleats are the Defining Trend of 2019
The first time I saw South Korean designer Chiho Cheon's lacquered cement and corrugated cardboard Criteria chairs, I joked to Monica that they were the furniture equivalent of Issey Miyake's ready-to-wear cult-favorite Pleats Please brand. Now that I've seen Cheon's extension of the line — tables and chairs in vibrant shades of red, lavender, and robin's egg blue — I stand firmly by that assessment, especially as we've seen tiny plissé folds take over everything from fashion to architecture in 2019.
12.03.19
Gift Guides
Two-Toned Vases and Velvet Body Pillows — The 2019 Sight Unseen Gift Guide, Part I
By now we've come to understand how hotly anticipated our annual gift guides are, so considering that it's after Thanksgiving, we'll cut to the chase: We did our gift guides a bit differently this year. In addition to our editor picks — today's by Jill — we asked our favorite designers and influencers to share their best gifts for giving and receiving, and over on Instagram, you'll have the chance to win four of the coolest items from each of our three guides.
11.26.19
Excerpt: Exhibition
Nina Cho’s New Mirror Series Asks You to Contemplate Infinity, NBD
“Even though a mirror is two-dimensional, it feels three-dimensional to me,” explains Detroit-based designer Nina Cho, who has been putting reflective surfaces at the center of her work since her debut collection back in 2015. For her latest exhibition, developed by Colony Consult, Cho created a series of geometric, two- and three-toned mirrors called Maung Maung.
11.13.19
Sight Unseen Presents
We Asked 10 Designers to Make Us a Birthday Card — Here Are the Results
For our last bit of 10th anniversary content this week, we followed a tradition set forth on our first and fifth birthdays — asking a select group of designers to make us a "birthday card." This year, without any prompting by us, most of the submissions centered around something we often try to publish on the site — sneak peeks into a designer's practice in the form of as-yet-unpublished designs.
11.09.19
Saturday Selects
Week of November 4, 2019
A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: Hay's ultra-chic, French-inspired bedding, Matisse-esque ceramics on view in Italy, and a series of new textiles and wallcoverings using designs by Bauhaus masters and SU icons Gunta Stölzl and Anni Albers.
11.08.19
Excerpt: Exhibition
Pierre Yovanovitch’s New Exhibition is a Domestic Fantasy Come to Life
Whither the design gallery? After seeing Pierre Yovanovitch's new show at R & Company in New York this week, we're beginning to wonder if we'll ever see a traditional gallery show — you know, the kind with a bunch of white walls and plinths — again.
11.07.19
Sighted
Franz West’s Hyper-Colorful Chairs Are At the Top of Our Fantasy Furniture Wishlist
It's gift guide season, and if our budget this year was $12,000 instead of $200, we would definitely be buying someone we love one of the new Franz West chairs available at David Zwirner as part of their latest online Viewing Room exhibition. The late Austrian-born artist was not known for making especially functional furniture, but these chairs might be the closest he came to pure design.
11.04.19
Excerpt: Exhibition
A New Furniture Collection by Tatiana Bilbao, the Mexican Architect On Everyone’s Lips
The Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao is known for a kind of socially conscious, contextually sensitive, human-centered approach — so in hindsight it was only a matter of time before she would turn her attention to the realm of interiors and the way people interact within a space. If you're in Copenhagen this month, we would highly suggest first going to see Bilbao's solo exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art to learn about her ideas and working methods. But then head straight back into town to Étage Projects, to see Bilbao's first furniture collection.