Design Miami/Basel featured a swanky new location, two Dutch galleries, a host of Dutch designers and celebrity visitors: we want to know what Brad Pitt bought.
Will Nacho Carbonell be the latest designer to have an artwork displayed in Brad Pitt's home? The Hollywood star - well known for his keen interest in design - dropped by the opening day of Design Miami/Basel while on his visit to Art Basel and seemed rather taken by Carbonell's intriguing pieces exhibited at Galleria Rossana Orlandi's stand.
This fourth Basel edition, 27 international galleries presented contemporary and for the first time this year, historical design. The mix of design presented was extremely varied from 18th century design to 20th century design masters - Poul Kjærholm, Arne Jacobsen, Gio Ponti, Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier to today's established designers - Ron Arad, Arik Levy, Marc Newson. Definitely outshining the famous names were young designers whose experimental limited edition pieces aimed to push the boundaries of design on many fronts. It's a true collector's fair where picking the right young talent to invest in is a risk but also reward if you know which one to place your bets on.
Priveekollektie presented new versions of existing pieces from emerging Dutch designers including Kranen | Gille, Dave Keune, Alexander Pelikan and Wouter Scheublin. The gallery also presented a part of Ted Noten's 'Haunted by 36 Women' series, featuring such ladies as Chocolate Hooker (coated in cocoa powder), Fashionista, Femme Fatale and Ice Cream girl. For this project, Noten studied 36 archetypes of women, which he expressed as large sculptures from which 3D scans were made to be fashioned into jewellery objects. For now, 14 ladies are completed. Noten took inspiration from the 19th century Japanese artist Hokusai who over a period of years documented Mount Fuji in different perspectives and seasons in his famous woodblock print series 'Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji'. Noten comments on his own interpretation of this. "As an honest heterosexual man, what would I like to see different perspectives of? A teapot? Or a lamp? I thought, a woman!" Noten explains that the sculpture can be seen as the haute couture piece which becomes translated into democratic jewellery and then collector's jewellery. "I immensely enjoyed bouncing between the big and small scale, between object and jewellery and where I could almost work as a sculptor." And his favourites ladies? Miss Piggy and Mom.
On other stands, Vivid Gallery exhibited two of Studio Job's oversized 'Silverware' pieces clad in Bisazza mosaics, and Atelier van Lieshout's 'Fossil Chair' and 'Liquor Master' based on the form of the human body. The story goes that van Lieshout first wrapped two of his employees in plastic, then made a mould of their bodies in foam to be made into the chair, and the quirky freestanding booze display unit. London's Carpenters Workshop Gallery also presented a lamp from Atelier van Lieshout along with a 'Lathe' chair from Sebastian Brajkovic and lights from Drift. Pieces from Satyendra Pakhalé could be seen at Gabrielle Ammann // Gallery and Paris' Tools Galerie showed single pieces from Pieke Bergmans, Asylum Collection, Ineke Hans, Chris Kabel, Studio Minale-Maeda and Marcel Wanders. Maarten Baas' 'Real Time' installation from Milan was also shown and his Clay bed and several Sculpt pieces were presented at Galleria Rossana Orlandi. Baas who will be one of the main speakers at the Design Talks alongside with Li Edelkoort and Murray Moss, will discuss 'Rising Designers, Commissioned Projects and the High-Profile Patrons who support them.'
Nacho Carbonell and Tomáš Gabzdil Libertiny were two of the four winners for the Designers of the Future Award 2009, honouring young designers working with experimental, limited-edition and non-industrial techniques. The designers were commissioned to create an installation using mirror and plaster, focusing on the articulation of space instead of just the object itself. Libertiny worked with the idea of reflection and the celebration of process, creating a black polished plaster mirrored wall reflecting a large plaster egg which was created in a slow process of layering the material onto a rotating mould. Reflection was also a theme in Nacho Carbonell's installation but more about what was going on his own head than in the outside world. "Here, I've made my own universe reflecting what's happening in my mind where ideas are crossing with each other, making love, interacting. On the wall, you can start to scratch away at the surface (made of plaster render) where the mirror and drawings underneath show your true self." Carbonell also exhibited several pieces at Galleria Rossana Orlandi where Brad Pitt dropped by. What we want to really know is, did the Hollywood star buy anything???
Event images courtesy of Design Miami, photography: James Harris