This Bower x Emily Mullin Showcase Was the Unexpectedly Tough — and Perfect — Exhibition New York Design Week Needed

Here is a list of things I do not particularly like: surfaces designed to look as if they were tattooed, ceramics bound by chains or ropes, almost anything with spikes. Part of the reason I don't like these things is that, as a child of the '90s, they often feel a little poser-y to me — like the designer thought that by using the signifiers of toughness that they could take a shortcut to actually being that thing. But you know what I do like? When designers use materials or processes that are often associated with something hard or edgy in an unexpected or weird or superfluous way. This includes Bower's new Woven collection of mirrors — which weave thin strips of leather through a grid of mirror-polished stainless steel, a kind of Anni Albers for the post-punk era — and Emily Mullin's raku-fired ceramics, which get their signature look from combusting in a blaze of smoke and straw.
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To Christen Their New Dimes Square Gallery, Love House Kept It in the Family

This past month, Love House founders Jared Heinrich and Aric Yeakey debuted a new space just off Dimes Square in New York's Lower East Side; to christen the gallery, they curated their first group show ever — 60 brand-new works from the deep bench of contemporary design talent they've spent years fostering. The exhibition was titled, appropriately, The Family Show, and each artist or designer was asked to contribute a piece that represented their own interpretation of the theme.
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Galerie Néotu Was Legendary In Its Heyday. A New Show in NYC Invites You to Experience the Radical Furniture That Put it On the Map.

In 1984, Gérard Dalmon and Pierre Staudenmeyer co-founded Néotù in Paris — a now-legendary project existing somewhere between a gallery and a furniture producer, a home for designers who considered furniture to be a fine art medium, and a mode of emotional expression. Néotù wasn’t beholden to any particular aesthetic, though you could loosely and retrospectively apply the Postmodern descriptor. Rather, they sought to put divergent styles in conversation with one another and provide a singular home for a multiplicity of voices. They also wanted to challenge the then-dominant production and distribution models. The name itself is a phonetic wordplay on “néo-tout” or neo-everything. A new show, Néotù: The Visionary Years, now gives the gallery its due.
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In a New Exhibition, Minjae Kim Unpacks Los Angeles Through a Lens of Wild Animals and Silent Film

Who else is obsessed with wild animals who become celebrities — living, as they often do, in the thick of human society? In 2023, I was gripped by the news about Flaco, the owl who escaped the Central Park Zoo and flew free in Manhattan for a full year. For Korean-born, New York–based artist Minjae Kim, it was P-22, the mountain lion who famously lived in LA’s Griffith Park from 2012 to until his death in 2022, who triggered the concept for Kim's latest exhibition at Marta gallery. Called Phantom-22, the show represents the “passage of creatures, ideas, and topographies that define Los Angeles as it continues its constant shift between fantasy and reality,” which Kim examines through this comprehensive body of work playing on several LA tropes. 
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Sung Jang Paints Imperfect Maps of His Memories at Volume Gallery in Chicago

In Shape of Land, the Chicago-based designer Sung Jang evokes locations that have personal meaning for him and abstracts them into dream places. Finding a deep resonance in cartography, Jang knows maps aren’t simply navigational tools, but more metaphorically, help us situate ourselves and understand our histories. At the city’s Volume Gallery, Jang’s show of objects and paintings — a six-panel screen and wall works of acrylic on linen, textured with inked sand — draws on his Korean heritage, with imagery that resembles continents and an imaginary topography of mountains and rivers. Jang was particularly inspired by maps from Korea’s Middle Joseon period — depictions of the world more valuable for their artistic and interpretive quality than their precision and utility.
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This New Exhibition Invites Artists and Designers to Reconsider a Classic Wedding Object

I got married a few months ago, and while it was by no means a traditional affair, there were of course moments and objects we incorporated into the ceremony that held historical meaning and significance. Something we didn’t include? (Admittedly because we’d never heard of it before?) The Loving Cup, a decorative vessel historically used at wedding banquets to commemorate a union, with two handles — one for each partner — and an inscription with the date and names of the couple. This endearing symbol of love and good fortune is the subject of an exhibition at New York’s Jacqueline Sullivan Gallery, where contemporary interpretations of these vessels by an interesting selection of artists and design talents are displayed alongside a host of historic artifacts.
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In a London Gallery, Grace Prince Explores the Appeal of Fragments and Fragility

How do you hold absence? How do you embody something that's missing, or give shape and weight to a fleeting phantom? The six limited-edition pieces in Grace Prince’s new furniture collection — called Held Absence and made exclusively for London's Béton Brut gallery, where it's currently on view — all explore this paradox. The themes of absence and fragility that color this collection invoke their seeming opposites, presence and strength, while also raising the question: Are they so opposite after all?
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In Barcelona, a New Exhibition Showcasing 26 Up-and-Comers on the Collectible Design Scene

Vasto, a Barcelona gallery for emerging design, originally began as an online platform in 2020. But within a couple of years, founder Carmen Riestra had opened the physical space Casa Vasto, creating an immersive environment for up-and-coming artists and designers. Collectible Barcelona, curated by Riestra, showcases pieces from 26 international designers, putting them in dialogue with one another – a conversation that’s both pointed and wide-ranging in its exploration of materials and its conceptual underpinnings.
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After 100 Years in Business, You Might Think You Know the Iconic Swedish Design Store Svenskt Tenn. You’d Be Wrong.

Something funny happens when you're a company that's been around for a full century. People start to assume that they already know everything there is to know about you — that they've somehow osmotically absorbed your brand tenets or your ethos by virtue of you simply sticking around. For me, the storied Swedish design brand Svenskt Tenn, which is celebrating its 100th birthday this year, was one of those companies. But then I went to Stockholm in September on the occasion of Svenskt Tenn's centenary retrospective opening at Liljevalchs Kunsthalle, running through January 12. Called Svenskt Tenn: A Philosophy of Home, it spans thirteen thematic rooms, curated by Jane Withers together with Svenskt Tenn's head curator Karin Södergren. It was there I realized that what I knew about this company hardly scratched the surface.
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In a New Archival Exhibition, Maria Pergay — the Original Multi-Hyphenate — Takes Her Place Among Giants

When considering Maria Pergay, it is necessary to invoke the hyphen. But even a descriptor like designer-artist-decorator doesn’t begin to contain the whole of the late designer's experience or her legacy. Opening this week at New York’s Demisch Danant gallery, the exhibition Precious Strength: Maria Pergay Across the Decades aims to secure Pergay’s place as a design pioneer, alongside fellow female powerhouses like Charlotte Perriand and Eileen Gray.
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Lukas Cober’s Crinkled-Resin Collection Was Inspired By A Beloved Children’s Book

Confession: I have never read Where the Wild Things Are. But after learning that the children’s book left such a lasting impression on Maastricht designer Lukas Cober — and influenced his most recent collection of resin-fiberglass works — I've added it to the top of my library list. Cober was so enchanted by American author and illustrator Maurice Sendak’s 1963 picture book, which follows a boy’s journey to a jungle inhabited by mischievous monsters, he decided to reconnect with his inner child and tap into a state of curiosity, naïveté, and sheer joy while crafting the body of work that’s currently on view at the Objects With Narratives gallery in Brussels.
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