Design Miami / Basel 2019

Design Miami/ Basel 2019

Gallery Exhibitions to Include Debut Works and Solo Shows, Rare Mid-Twentieth Century Masterpieces, and the Largest Curio Program in the Fair’s History

Basel – Forty-three international galleries will present at the fourteenth edition of Design Miami/ Basel on June 11–16. Among the works on view will be debut contemporary works, rare masterpieces ground-breaking mid-twentieth-century furniture, and solo shows from historical and contemporary designers, alongside work that engages with our rapidly changing planet, resonating with the fair’s overall theme of Elements: Earth. At the same time, Design Miami/ Basel welcomes thirteen Curio presentations, the most in the fair’s history, for the program’s tenth iteration

Untitled II (Console 5 pieds – Nero) by Karl Lagerfeld 2018 at Carpenters Workshop Gallery ©courtesy of Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt.

“The gallery presentations and Curio program this year offer the highest level of quality, bringing together works that display innovative design practices consistent with the fair’s theme of Elements: Earth, alongside rare, iconicand historically significant offerings,” says Aric Chen, 2019 Curatorial Director, Design Miami/.

“We are inspired by the never-before-seen designs on view and are privileged that designers and gallerists continue to choose the fair as a global stage for debuting new work.”

Debut Works

Contributing to Design Miami/’s continuing role as a global platform to launch new design concepts, Galerie kreo will present Hella Jongerius’s Facet Bottle, a collection of monumental ceramic jars which typify her exploration of color through chromatic variations on day and night. The Future Perfect will bring Floris Wubben’s latest additions to his Pressed project with large-scale tables, lamps, vases, chairs, stools, planters, and a chandelier that typify the surprisingbeauty of the industrial process. Patrick Parrish Gallery will present Strata, a new series of terrazzo tables and furniture by Tron Meyer made from pigmented concrete and glacial terrain from the fjords of Vestfold, Norway.

Cristina Grajales Gallery will introduce new works by Pedro Barrail, whose handcrafted wooden furniture is incorporates traditions from his native Paraguay, whereindigenous tribes people burn his designs with “tattoos” representing visual motifs and narratives drawn from the tribe’scultural practices.

Continuing its focus on furniture by architects and artists, Brussels-based MANIERA will unveil the second furniture collection by Studio Mumbai, three years after the first series was produced. The new series places traditional Indian crafts alongside Italian frescos and ancient Egyptian artefacts, incorporating stone, brick, bamboo, obsidian, and Japanese washi paper.

Solo Shows

Among the many solo shows at the fair will be the first presentation of Luis Barragán (1902–1988) at Design Miami/ Basel. SIDE Gallery will feature several pieces by the storied Mexican architect, whose use of space, light, and colors inspired by the traditional architecture of his country expanded and enriched the modernist vocabulary. Galerie Philippe Gravier will present a series of kinetic light sculptures handmade using steel, carbon, and LED lights by award-winning French architect Odile Decq.

Friedman Benda will show the work of seminal Italian architect, designer, and theoretician Andrea Branzi, marking the first time his Planks, Stones, and Trees series will be seen together. The exhibition will highlight key pieces from his oeuvre, including pieces from Branzi’s ground-breaking Animali Domestici series, rarely seen outside of a museum context.

Salon 94 Design will devote its space to an exhibition of Philippe Malouin’s take on office furniture, fabricated using industrial materials such as nylon, rubber, and steel—some left raw, others coated in enamel or pigment to produce an array of primary and neutral colors. Galleria Antonella Villanova will feature Daniel Kruger’s jewelry made using both low-and high-end materials, taking forms that vary from organic to geometric and show a skillful and sensuous manipulation of texture, pattern, and color.

From the art world, Mercado Moderno will present Abraham Palatnik, the 91-year-old pioneer of kinetic art whose works are characterized by the use of iron and wood in combination with painted glass surfaces. These pieces, being shown for the first time outside of Brazil, are one of a kind or made in very small editions and have been assiduously assembled over the past twenty years.

Rare Masterpieces

In another first for the fair, Erik Thomsen Gallery will present rare early twentieth-century Japanese and Chinese bamboo baskets, including a masterpiece of gyo basket making from 1934 by Iizuka Rokansai (1890–1958), universally regarded as the father of modern Japanese bamboo work. From France, Galerie Patrick Seguin will have on view an extremely rare Jean Prouvé (1901–1984) bookshelf made for a teacher’s bedroom in the boarding section of the École Nationale Professionnelle in Metz, as well as one of only twenty tables the designer created for the Cafétéria des Arts et Métiers at the Cité Internationale Universitaire, Paris.

Other masterpieces on show will include a rare Jean Royère (1902–1981) Persan floor lamp at Galerie Jacques Lacoste, which was commissioned in 1955 by a close acquaintance of Royère’s associate Jacques Levy-Ravier for his Parisian apartment. Galerie Chastel-Maréchal will also feature work by Royère, including an exceptional group of four Ondulations bar stools coming directly from the collection of the family that commissioned the set in 1955–57, complete with blueprints and photographic documentation. Galerie Matthieu Richard will contribute to the selection of great French design with an important Marc du Plantier (1901–1975) lamp in wrought iron and crystal, emblematic of his work in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

American design will be well represented with CONVERSO’s presentation of rare furniture designs by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959), including a distinctive aluminum and upholstery desk chair made in 1956 for Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, the architect’s only realized skyscraper. Galerie Eric Philippe will showcase the singular Mesa table by Terence Harold Robsjohn-Gibbings (1905–1976), an iconic example of twentieth-century American furniture design and one of the most beautiful pieces created by Robsjohn-Gibbings in his signature free-form, modernist style.

Milestones of Mid-Century Furniture/

Of the mid-century highlights coming to Design Miami/ Basel, Nilufar Gallery will presenta two-seater sofa by Studio BBPR (formed in 1932) that exemplifiesthe functional reinterpretation of traditional furniture types by intellectual modernists. Galleria Rossella Colombari is bringing beds designed in 1955 by Carlo Mollino (1905–1973) for his storied Casa del Sole in Cervinia, Italy, comprised of two single beds that could be stacked as a bunk bed using an ingenious system of brass latches and locks.

Magen H Gallery will present an example of iconic French furniture designer Pierre Chapo’s (1927–1987) T35 “converging lines” series, a system that requiredlengthy research and complex production solutions for assembling its wood sections. Demisch Danant will bring the Diamond chair by René-Jean Caillette (1919–2005), whose innovative and rigorous approach produced this molded plywood chair, which won the gold medal at the 1958 Brussels International EXPO and remains a milestone of French modernism. LAFFANOUR–Galerie Downtown will show Jean Prouvé’s Fabert bed, part of a furniture set made for the Lycée Fabert in Metz in 1935–36. Representing the forefront of prefabrication and production in its time, the bed is constructed of well-preserved folded green steel sheets and remains one of the designer’s most iconic pieces from this period.

At Galleri Feldt, Nanna Ditzel’s (1923–2005) prototype chaise lounge designed for Knud Willadsen’s stand at the 1951 Copenhagen Cabinetmakers’ Guild Exhibition will be on view––one of only two that were manufactured. Its singular character, made over time with meticulous attention to detail, is a testament to its creator’s uncompromising vision of quality in design and evidences her resistance to industrialized furniture manufacturing. Galerie Meubles et Lumières will feature a rare pair of mid-century wall lights by Jacques Biny (1913–1976), the French designer and founder of the lighting company Luminalite, who was exceptionally productive and known for the functionality and minimalism of his designs, which, starting in 1960, were geared toward hotels, clinics, and hospitals.

Organic Forms

Biomorphic and anthropomorphic forms, designs drawn from both the human body and nature, will be seen throughout the fair. Carpenters Workshop Gallery is showing Marc Newson’s sensual, curvaceous hour-glass lounge, part of his series inspired by the universal life force Orgone. hypothesized by psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, who positioned his patients inside a capsule-like device in order to absorb this force. At Erastudio Apartment-Gallery, an example of Carlo Zauli’s (1926–2002) ceramic Zen series will be on view, revealing his explorationsof primitive and elementary shapes in clay and white monochrome, an aesthetic known as “bianco Zauli.”

Galerie Régis Mathieu will present Mathieu’s own reinvention of traditional rock crystal chandeliers with his Jellyfish chandelier, featuring shapely contours, slender filaments, and winding tendrils housing cut-rock crystal drops in gilt bronze to create a halo of warm, scintillating colors. Another aquatic-inspired chandelier will be seen at Caterina Tognon in the form of a luminescent and floating pink opal glass octopus designed by Maria Grazia Rosin and made by glassblowing master Sergio Tiozzo in Murano.

Gallery ALL will feature Zhipeng Tan’s 33 Step Chair a representation of the spine and inversion of the human body which places the cervical bonesat floor level and he pelvis as the seat. Hostler Burrows will show Anat Shiftan’s Still Life bisque porcelain sculptures, born out of her exploration of nature and its representations throughout art history.

Future Visions/

Both galleries and curios will explore the fair’s overarching theme of Elements: Earth, which examines the future of making and materials at a time when human activity has changed the very composition of the planet itself. Studio Formafantasma’s Ore Streams project at Giustini / Stagetti. imagines a time in the not-too-distant future when humankind will have exhausted much of the Earth’s below-ground resources and furniture incorporating e-waste—extracted from discarded computers, keyboards, motherboards, mobile phones, and other electronics—of the result of “above-ground mining.” Functional Art Gallery presents a series of works by the design duo OrtaMiklos evoking a condition of “modern technological ruins” with The White Ladies, a pair of reading lamps made of women’s stockings filled with cement formed using electric cables.

Largest Curio Program to Date

With thirteen Curio presentations, Design Miami/ Basel’s 2019 program is the most extensive in the fair’s history:

Armel Soyer presents Remember by Olga Engel

Designer Olga Engel creates a playful universe of contemporary and fundamentally dreamlike forms that are tactile, understated, elegant, and joyful. Her work combines cheerfulness and minimalism, yielding to a manner of figurative representation imbued with irony and nostalgia.

Atelier Swarovski presents Crystal Blindby Studio Brynjar & Veronika and Slanted Tiles by Study O Portable

The Atelier Swarovski homeware lines include functional and decorative tabletop objects, home accessories, and gifts created in collaboration with the world’s leading design talents. Design duo Brynjar Sigurðarson and Veronika Sedlmair’s Crystal Blind is a series of bespoke prismatic slats in pure crystal that reflect and refract a rainbow of light and color. Study O Portable’s Slanted Tiles is a series of surfaces that exploits the emotional impact of crystal as a material.

Boghossian presents Gold Thread

Silk, being the most precious good traded on the Silk Road, is the fulcrum of both the stand and the jewelry on display from Boghossian, a six-generation family of jewelers. Visitors will first discover a modern cabinet of curiosities held solely on silk cords, only to realize that the jewels were also conceived using a similar weaving practice, this time crafted from the last remaining pieces of an 18-karatgold silk.

Camp Design Gallery presents Three Characters in the Second Act: The Royal Family by Adam Nathaniel Furman

Camp Design Gallery will continue its collaboration with Adam Nathaniel Furman, showcasing a project realizedwith the historic Italian company Abet Laminati focused on contemporary collectible design through three specially commissioned pieces, each of which generates its forceful presence through the deployment of intricately patterned surfaces and intriguing architectures.

Caroline Van Hoek presents TOAST

Gallery owner turned goldsmith Caroline Van Hoek presentsfor the first timeher own handmade workthat is not haute cuisine, but low-fi slow food, inspired by toast: “basic, simple, the best ingredients” and “messy, juicy, and not seeking perfection . . . just seeking pleasure.”

Didier Ltd presents Paint It Black by Louise Nevelson

The American sculptor Louise Nevelson (1899–1988) is renowned for her bold, monumental abstract assemblages. This presentation of jewelry will include her personal pieces from the 1960s; pendants designed for the Opera Theatre of St. Louis’s 1984 production of Cristoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo and Euridice formed from crushed tin cans, fishing floats, and beads; and pendants and brooches made shortly before she died, which have never been exhibited.

DIMORE GALLERY presents PIERO!

An exceptional collection of unique pieces by Italian architect Piero Portaluppi (1888–1967), created in 1926–29 for a private home, will be presented alongside a 1936 chandelier by Carlo Scarpa (1906–1978) for Venini, a very rare lamp from the 1960s by Gino Sarfatti (1912–1985), and a 1980s Sforzesca armchair by Studio Gavina. In dialogue with these historical pieces will be two debut contemporary works by Pierre Marie Agin.

Galerie SCENE OUVERTE presents Phantasmagoria

Galerie SCENE OUVERTE will present two ceramic artists whose works remind us of the evocative qualities of clay. Célia Bertrand will show two monumental lamps inspired by nature, with graphic lines in hammered iron softened by hand-applied white-gold leaves that lend a precious quality to this otherwise earthy material. Saraï Delfendahl’s ceramics, at once timeless and contemporary, imaginary and referent, give the object of art a metaphysical dimension.

Lindsey Adelman presents Paradise City

Lindsey Adelman’s new lighting collection, Paradise City––a network of slender rods that pin and bind hand-blown glass¬¬––finds inspiration from W. Somerset Maugham to Axl Rose, expressed through a visual language that recalls Helmut Newton’s famous photograph of model Nadja Auermann donning a menacing leg brace. The polished, architectural scaffolding creates an illusion of arresting change or stopping time and the hardware both supports and controls the natural gestures ofthe illuminated forms.

Mathieu Lehanneur presents Inverted Gravity

Mathieu Lehanneur will show a new collection of furniture that reveals a paradox of perception. Placed on blown-glass globes, monolithic and minimalist marble blocks will appear to be suspended. In a close dialogue with the Inverted Gravity collection, Lehanneur will also show the Twisted Infinity suspension and Bambou de Versailles parquet.

Nilufar Gallery presents FAR

Nilufar Gallery will present FAR, an initiative that subverts the established order of the gallery’s programs. FAR embraces the work of individuals who often operate collectively—forming, dissolving, regrouping, and ungrouping fluidly and open-endedly. A temporary gathering of collectives that captures a snapshot of a new generation, FAR features works by Alberto Vitelio, Audrey Large, Bram Vanderbeke, Destroyers/Builders, Johan Viladrich, Julien Manaira, Michael Schoner, Odd Matter, Thomas Ballouhey, and Wendy Andreu.

Paul Hughes Fine Arts presents Confluences: From Ancient Andes to Bauhaus

After migrating to the United States in 1932, Anni (1899–1994) and Josef (1888–1976) Albers began making frequent trips to Latin America, collecting ancient art from throughout the region, much of which remains in the public collections of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and the Yale University Art Gallery. This presentation will illustrate the Albers’ avid admiration of historic Andean textiles and their kinship with indigenous weavers in terms of aesthetic composition, color values, and technical skills.

Syz Art Jewels presents Dino Runesby Kerstin Brätsch

Part of Suzanne Syz’s program of commissioning contemporary artists to reenvision the jewelry box as sculpture, Kerstin Brätsch has produced an all-over wallpaper environment based on images of marble stones and by using marbling, a process in which water and ink forms a visual imitation of stone. Brätsch has superimposed on this background 3-D renderings of dinosaurs, juxtaposing an extinct ancient life with new technology, while also designing five unique amorphous glass jewelry cases filled with volcanic stones.