Polish Design 1955-1968: We Want to Be Modern

This pioneering exhibition of approximately 180 objects from the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw, featuring the most important examples of Polish design, rarely seen in the west, explores the significance of the objects of everyday use in shaping modernity and the modern Polish identity emerging during the post-thaw period.

The collection of post-1945 design in the National Museum in Warsaw is the most comprehensive in Poland, and the exhibition benefits from it, showing a whole range of applied arts of the period, including ceramics, glass, textiles, furniture, and other household objects, periodicals, photographs, and films.

Polish Design 1955-1968: We Want to Be Modern, at The National Museum in Warsaw, February 4th – April 17th
via: designboom

In Between by Sebastien Verdon

In Between, Installation, Skizze, Socle, Frame, Red Thread, Magnets, Plattform10 ewz-selnau Zürich, by Sebastien Verdon

Wearable Architecture by SUUM

Designed for modern mind and ritual, SUUM SUMS are wearable architecture that requires the human form to build, support, and embody. More than metal. SUUM SUMS are the experience of acquired function and multi-faceted beauty when beings and design concept work together. Each SUUM SUM is a collection of precision, interrelated stainless-steel components. Original compositions are chosen and may evolve over time with additional sculpture- and material-altering components, known in SUUM terminology as EVOLVERS.

Wearable Architecture: Rings, by Nava Wiegert, Brianna Kenyon SUUM

Wunderboxes by PostlerFerguson for V&A

Wunderboxes is a temporary installation designed for the V&A Friday late programme “Archive Live” in the grand entrance hall of the V&A museum in London. PostlerFerguson was commissioned to visualize parts of their research and the design team responded with an installation of differently formatted cardboard boxes each one housing a bright orange light box displaying a variety of three dimensional models to create an abstract but strangely familiar collection of “things”. Spectators were encouraged to come closer and examine the partly hidden and camouflaged objects being drawn in by the warm and hypnotising orange glow of the boxes. From a tiger attack helicopter to Han Solo in Carbonite – from a Lobster to the iconic “Nike Swoosh” the objects represent the designers divers interests and fields of research from science to popular culture.

Wunderboxes, by Postlerferguson, for Victoria and Albert Museum

9 Mirrors by Ron Gilad

At the Milan Furniture Fair Dilmos presents a series of mirrors that contain historical references combining the present with the past and that, like the nine lives of a cat, represents the possibility of inner lives. In the series 9 mirrors Ron Gilad suggests that the mirrored image contains a hypocrisy which reflects only our exterior selves. He is asking us to contemplate a more complex and poetic possibility of reality. The title, like the nine lives of a cat, represents the possibility of inner lives or the soul of the mirror.

Gilad’s mirrors are simple rectangular wooden frames that have been injected with stories. The reflection of the spectator is no longer only objective but contains more than the present. The functional aspect becomes secondary; the cords over the glass, the voided gilded frames and the bronze sconce in front of the user’s face are not here to decorate the mirrors. Some of the mirrors contain historical references combining the present with the past; a reference to other lives besides our own. Others play with structure, distorting our perception of the mirror as an object.

9 Mirrors by Ron Gilad, at Dilmos, Milan, via: domus

Mixed Media by Gianfranco Pardi

Mixed Media, by Gianfranco Pardi, via The Silver Lining

Exhibtion: Motoi Yamamoto Labyrinth at Reliefs

Labyrinth, by Motoi Yamamoto, Salt, 3.2 x 11m, Exhibition: Reliefs, 12 January – 26 February, at Fondation Espace Ecureuil , France

Exhibition: Cubics Jan Slothouber + William Graatsma

After an architectural training Jan Slothouber (1918 – 2007) and William Graatsma (1925) worked as architects / designers from 1955 for the Dutch State Mines (DSM). Here they designed the packing, product applications, advertisements and exhibitions and gave the company a recognizable face. Within the information service of DSM the two had an unique position: they could build their own world and developed the principle of cubic constructions. The cubic as a main point brought restriction but also clearity in the multiplicity of possibilities according to Slothouber and Graatsma. The use of several materials adds each time new aspects to the functioning of the cubic constructions.

With their work Slothouber and Graatsma had a clear social intention. The designers considered themselves in fact as ‘ anonymous ‘ discoverers of the many applications of cubics. In democratic passing these possibilities, in which the useful construction exceeds the personal, artistic claim, lies the meaning of their activities. On one hand their working method was entirely new, on the other hand it had been linked with an old idealistic tradition, which propagated an important role for art and design in society.

Cubics Jan Slothouber + William Graatsma, January 9 – February 27, at Vivid Gallery, Rotterdam, Netherlands

Exhibition: dancing squares by nendo

We assembled square planes to create a sense of motion in this series of objects. One part of the bookshelf is frozen in its cascade of tumbling shelves, creating variety in the way books can be stacked. The stool’s twist endows it with visual play. Lamps roll about but are stable, thank to their planes, and cast light in different directions. The table leans as though falling away, but maintains its function as a table, and makes objects placed on it seem to sink into its folds and sways. The different ‘movements’make balance and unbalance overlap, as though we are watching the planes themselves dance.

Exhibition: dancing squares, by nendo, January 13th – 16, Art Stage, Singapore, Photography by Masayuki Hayashi

Gravity is a Force to be Reckoned With by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle

Madrid-born artist Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s latest work, Gravity is a Force to be Reckoned With, realizes one of Mies van der Rohe’s unbuilt projects–albeit upside-down. The installation is an inverted, replica of Mies’ 50×50 House project from 1951. The small, house is completely enclosed in glass, with black leather Barcelona chairs, glass-topped tables, and a wood partition, containing a kitchen with a small range, countertop and a French Press with a teaspoon.

Gravity is a Force to be Reckoned With, by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle