09.09.14

Excerpt: Exhibition

Future Tropes at Volume Gallery

"Timeless" is probably the most overused — and abused — word in design in recent years, typically employed by designers in the context of sustainability in order to imply that a piece has such a classic look or function that its expected longevity can somehow justify its existence in a sea of wastefulness and overproduction. Future Tropes, a new group show that opened this past weekend at Chicago's Volume Gallery, approaches the concept of timelessness from a very different angle, however: "The work should be slightly ahead of the world, slightly un-contemporary, setting the stage for future codes yet operating in a place that precedes our ability to apply language to those codes." (—Jan Verwoert, as adjusted by RO/LU.) In other words, objects that are equally linked to our prehistoric past and our distant, utopian future. Volume curators Sam Vinz and Claire Warner proposed that brief to Leon Ransmeier, ROLU, Jonathan Muecke, Tanya Aguiñiga, Jonathan Olivares, and Anders Ruhwald, who exchanged ideas on the topic before each creating a custom piece responding to it. See the results after the jump.

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09.07.14

Shopping

27 Incense Burners That Double As Art Objects

A few years ago, we noticed an uptick in the number of incense burners being produced by small-scale makers, and produced this little nothing of a story. Fast-forward two years, and that uptick has suddenly become a deluge — like jewelry once was, incense burners have become an indispensable part of a designers’ small goods line-up, as well as a place to experiment with form and materials. The rise in popularity of incense has gone hand in hand with an explosion in the world of ceramics (since incense burners can, by definition, only be made from a certain number of materials, including clay). But it all comes back to the recent popularity of cleansing rituals in general, be they part of a greater wellness trend or simply a way to reclaim some shred of sanity in these troubled times. Even better, these minimalist takes look stylish even when not in use. Breathe deep and scroll through to find where to find — and buy — our favorites right now.

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09.05.14

Q+A

Ricky Swallow vs. Matt Paweski, for Herald St London

As much fun as it is, as journalists, to the pick the brains of the artists and designers who inspire us every day, there's something we enjoy even more: being a fly on the wall as two of our favorite creatives spar back and forth about their craft. It's something we'll never understand as intimately as those who are makers themselves, and when those makers are as thoughtful about their work as Los Angeles artists Ricky Swallow and Matt Paweski are, it makes for a most excellent Friday read. Swallow interviewed Paweski in advance of the latter's solo exhibition, opening tomorrow at Herald St gallery in London, and we were lucky enough to nab a transcription of that Q&A. Read on to find out what makes a Matt Paweski, which direction his work is going in, and what the heck a "kerf" actually is.

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09.04.14

8 Things

Andy Coolquitt, Artist

“It was a weird thing for a kid growing up in a Baptist family to collect,” says Andy Coolquitt of the whiskey bottles that formed his earliest stockpile. “I was interested in the beautiful, sculptural shapes of the bottles and the graphic design of the labels. It was something we didn’t have in our house, so it was a bit exotic. I had them displayed in this little cave-like space off the garage.” The now Austin-based artist was raised in Mesquite, Texas, in what he describes as a “bland, boring suburban existence,” with little “interest in visual culture.” Rebellion came in the form of “having a whole lot of stuff around me and letting that stuff dictate my aesthetic.” Since then, Coolquitt has literally turned obsessive scavenging into an art form. Metal pipes and tubing, plastic lighters, aluminum cans — these are just a few of the found materials he repurposes and transforms, setting them up in conversation with each other and giving them a life-like, almost human quality.

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09.03.14

Sighted

Inka Järvinen, Graphic Designer and Printmaker

Finnish graphic artist and designer Inka Järvinen began her career with a degree in fashion from Helsinki University of Art and Design in 2005. But after graduating, she quickly discovered she preferred designing in two dimensions to three. So what do you do when you hold a diploma in something that doesn't suit your true passion? You follow those dreams back to school and get yourself a second degree! Armed with a BA in graphic design, Järvinen went on to co-found Tsto, a design agency whose hotshot clients include Artek, Levi's, and Nokia, and she continues to work on solo projects in her spare time. We especially love her graphic prints, controlled yet unpredictable. They're clean, and perfectly executed by someone that clearly understands the principles of balance, line, and pattern. We've excerpted some of our favorites after the jump.

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04.16.12

Sighted

Balanced by Mischer’Traxler at Wait and See

Two years ago, we went to Milan for the annual furniture fair and noticed, to our delight, a very Sight Unseen–appropriate theme: Rather than just presenting their work, designers were using their Salone exhibitions to showcase their process alongside their finished products. Last year was no exception to the trend, and this year, one of the most promising Milan preview emails to come across the transom at Sight Unseen HQ saw the Vienna-based duo mischer'traxler poised to create a new piece from the tools and inspirations used to develop their old ones. For Balanced, an installation opening tomorrow at the Milanese concept shop Wait and See — a kind of next-gen 10 Corso Como tucked inside a former monastery — the machine-obsessed couple dug up artifacts from the creation of four of their most popular projects and envisioned them laid out perfectly on either side of four gigantic homemade scales. Mischer'traxler gave Sight Unseen an exclusive first look at the show, by way of images they shot in their studio earlier this month, and told us a bit more about its genesis.

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09.02.14

Q+A

12 Dozen Egg Cups

Here at Sight Unseen, we have a pretty strict bias against kitsch. But every so often we stumble upon a project that, while somewhat gimmicky, injects so much fun into the daily routine and has such roots in formal and material investigation, that it’s impossible to deny its utter lovability. We discovered such a project from the Leicester, England–based creative duo 12 Dozen Egg Cups, whose initial outing to a pottery class at a local community center developed into a challenge to repurpose the ubiquitous egg cup 144 different ways in the space of 12 months.

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08.30.14

Saturday Selects

Week of August 25, 2014

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: shockingly beautiful interiors, sophisticated student work, and a surprising new (Canadian!) design hub.

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08.29.14

Sighted

The Game’s New Online Shop

With Labor Day around the corner (we'll be taking off this Monday, along with the rest of America) we're allowing ourselves to get just a tiny bit excited about the impending fall. Sweaters, the color navy, and the smell of burning leaves are right up there among our favorite things. Fall is also the time when we stop spending our waking hours wondering when we can next get to the beach and start spending them a bit more inside on the computer, shopping for knickknacks that will make the homes we're about to spend a whole lot more time in even cozier. Our newest destination is The Game, a brand new shop that exists both online and in two Belgian outposts, founded and curated by Alexis Ryngaert, who's also behind of one of our all-time favorite design galleries, Victor Hunt.

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08.28.14

Sighted

CC-Tapis Rugs

An offshoot of a 1940s-era French-Persian rug house, CC-Tapis is a contemporary design label founded in 2011 and based in Milan. Each rug is hand-crafted by Tibetan artisans in Nepal using natural fibers, dyes, and processes to create a high-quality work of art. The company occasionally collaborates with artists and includes more traditional degradé wool patterns in its archive but we fell hard for these perfectly styled, geometrically-inclined specimens from their most recent catalog. Shot by Lorenzo Gironi, the photos of the collection are a perfect blend of simple colors and minimal props that bring the rugs into the third dimension with style. Check out some of our favorites below.

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08.27.14

At Home With

Page Neal of Bario-Neal

Seven years ago, when Page Neal and Anna Bario decided to relocate from New York and San Francisco respectively to work on a sustainably-minded line of jewelry, they chose Philadelphia because it was both affordable and close to New York City. “The decision to move here was a complete whim,” Neal told me over iced tea in her kitchen when I visited her South Philly home earlier this summer. “I didn’t know anyone and neither did Anna.” But the gamble paid off: The city, it turned out, had a thriving jewelry district where casting, engraving, and stone-setting workshops have sat above storefronts for generations. “It’s an amazing place for makers because small-scale manufacturing is really accessible,” Neal says.

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08.25.14

Sighted

Sigrid Calon, Visual Artist

For some reason, this is the week we finally put our money where our mouth is: First we took home one of Fort Standard's beautiful, mint-colored standing bowls, and then, on a whim last Wednesday, we picked up a risograph by Dutch visual artist Sigrid Calon, who we've had on our radar for quite some time. The hardest thing about buying Calon's work is narrowing down your options to just one — each print, which is based on the Tilburg artist's interpretation of an embroidery grid, is beautifully layered, using eight gradated colors, dots, and lines to achieve endless variations. Which one would you choose? See more after the jump.

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08.23.14

Saturday Selects

Week of August 18, 2014

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week had a very geometric vibe, from our favorite picks from the NYNOW gift fair, to a lamp inspired by '80s virtual reality, to a photography series showcasing the nature of shadows.

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