Box in Four Movements by Ron Arad

A prototype of Ron Arad’s, Box in Four Movements has sold for $23,750 at the recent Important Design auction at Wright in Chicago.

Box in Four Movements, 1994, cherry, chrome-plated steel, by Ron Arad Studio, at Wright

Exhibition: The Design Circus

On Display is a great selection of design pieces that are “Made in Spain” in an unusual and creative context: the circus. Go deep into a space where objects explode, stay balanced or are chopped in a guillotine. The wonderful world of the circus offers you the most fascinating products. Different scenes inspired by the art of the circus in which you will have an extraordinary vision of objects. Enjoy a magical and unique setting, in which you will surely see the most mysterious side of the most global Spanish design.

The Design Circus, at Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain, November 12 – January 24, Curated by CuldeSac, via: Yatzer

Burj Khalifa Tower Opens in Dubai

With a spectacular fireworks show, the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa tower has its opening ceremony in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. The 828 m tall tower is named after the president of the UAE and ruler of emirate of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan.

MAD Museum buys Brajkovic Lathe Chair

Last year, Sebastian Brajkovic’s Lathe VIII was bought by London’s Victoria & Albert Museum for the recent exhibition Telling Tales – Fear and Fantasy in Contemporary Design, and for their permanent collection. This year, another international museum will have one of his chairs in their permanent collection. New York’s Museum of Arts and Design recently purchased Lathe V. The chair is made of bronze and embroidered upholstery.

Brajkovic’s first series of Lathe Chairs were his graduation project from the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2006.

Lathe Chairs, by Sebastian Brajkovic
via: design.nl

Photography: Naoto Fukasawa The Outline by Tamotsu Fujii

Product designer Naoto Fukasawa unfailingly designs shapes to meet people’s expectations. His unique efforts to determine the “outline of things” from people’s unconscious are gathering attention worldwide. Advertising photography expert Tamotsu Fujii superbly depicts outlines blending into light and air.
The “outline of design”, something obvious yet invisible, emerges through the efforts of these two men. This exhibition, including 100 products designed by Naoto Fukasawa and some 70 photographs taken by Tamotsu Fujii over 4 years, is something never attempted before – an exhibition revealing what everyone has sought… the “outline of design”.

Exhibition: The Outline, Products by Naoto Fukasawa Photography by Tamotsu Fujii, October 16 – January 31, at 21_21 Design Sight, Tokyo, Japan

Vogue Magazine at Philip Johnson’s Glass House

Philo has the fashion world buzzing again with her first collection for Céline. Vogue Magazine and Annie Liebovitz used Philip Johnson’s Glass House as the set for the photoshoot.

Photography by Annie Liebovitz, at Philip Johnson’s Glass House, New Canaan, Connecticut, October Issue, Vogue Magazine

The World’s Smallest Snowman

The world’s smallest snowman at just 0.01 mm across – one fifth of the width of the average human hair. It is made of two tiny tin beads that usually used to calibrate electron microscope lenses.

The World’s Smallest Snowman, Created by National Physical Laboratory

Exhibition: Richard Mosse: The Fall

The Fall is a photographic survey of our historic unconscious. Richard Mosse travelled to intensely remote locations, from the Patagonian Andes to the Yukon Territories, and worked as an embed with the US military to produce work for this exhibition. The Fall is a rescue mission to try to locate our blasted sense of landscape and archeology, and reclaim the primeval waste for our imagination. Produced to an epic scale, each of the photographs in The Fall is a history painting for our times.

Richard Mosse, The Fall, November 19 – December 23, at Jack Shainman Gallery

Exhibition: Konstantin Grcic: Decisive Design

This significant exhibition is the first in America to explore the work produced by German designer Konstantin Grcic, one of the most important industrial designers working today. Grcic is known for his logical designs, driven by an honesty of materials and an appropriateness of production methods, yet injected with an inventiveness and originality that set his work apart.

Konstantin Grcic: Decisive Design, November 20 – January 24,
at Gallery 184, The Art Institute, Chicago, USA

Sotheby’s Auction: Kònò Society Mask

The Highlight of the upcoming African & Oceanic Art auction at Sotheby’s in Paris, is this Bamana sculpture with its profound understanding of form. Early 20th century painters and sculptors were influenced by the “Negro” art which was to profoundly change creativity in the modern world. It was also magnificently apparent in the exhibit entitled Primitivism displayed along with works by Max Ernst.

The Kònò mask can not simply be reduced to the powerful wild animals which its forms evoke in this case probably the hyena (long ears embodying the predator’s sentiency) and the elephant (wisdom, intelligence) the combination of which is remindful of the polymorphism of the powerful divinities whom the priests must influence favourably.

…brilliantly translated by the sculptor through the paradox of its absolute formal purity, and in this respect it resembles no other Kònò mask. Above and beyond the obviously perfectly accomplished work and the significant fact that the roots of its forcefulness delve into the subconscious, the emotions aroused in us by the arresting beauty of this masterpiece of Bamana art are the ultimate confirmation of its importance.

Lot 58: A Bamana Masterpiece: Kònò Society Mask, Mali, Estimate €300,000 – €400,000, African & Oceanic Art Auction, Thursday, Dec 3, at Sotheby’s, Paris
Update: Hammer Price €1,408,750