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Go with the Flow at Design Miami: Six Not-to-Miss Exhibitors

One theme at this year’s art and design fair is an emphasis on fluid and amorphous design.

By Branden Klayko, Superscript December 3, 2013

Rendering of Formlessfinder's Design Miami entrance pavilion, TENT PILE. © Formlessfinder

Each year design enthusiasts head south for the winter for the annual Design Miami fair, taking place this week in the Magic City. The event showcases galleries, designers, curators, and collectors of a wide array of design, from furniture to jewelry to architecture, and organizes a variety of events around the main exhibition. (Don’t miss this conversation between Richard Meier and Paul Goldberger!)

One of the most exciting happenings of the fair is its annual entry pavilion designed by an up-and-coming architect. This year’s structure by Bronx-based Formlessfinder, called TENT PILE, takes the form of a pitched aluminum roof apparently supported by a large sand dune. The pavilion’s 500-ton mass will help shield more than 50,000 exhibition-goers from the South Florida sun and, after the event is over, the sand will be recycled locally.

This year’s Design Miami exhibition opens tomorrow, Wednesday, December 4, and runs through December 8. To get you ready for the big event, Designers & Books previews six of our favorite exhibitors at the 2013 fair.

Three of Jeff Zimmerman's hand-blown glass Crinkled Sculptural Vessels, 2013. © R 20th Century Gallery

R 20th Century Gallery

Among the Design Miami offerings of this noted New York–based gallery is a collection of sumptuously crumpled sculptural vessels by artist Jeff Zimmerman. The Chicago-based glass artist has previously explored the crinkled aesthetic in his paintings, but now captures the strange quality of fluid motion in hand-blown glass. The vessels feature a gradient color scheme of muted pastels and reflective silvers. R 20th Century Gallery’s exhibition space will feature a higher-than-normal ceiling to accommodate a dramatic glass chandelier by Zimmerman.

Mathias Bengtsson's Cellular Chair, 2011 (left) and his Growth Chair, 2012 (right). © Galerie Maria Wettergren

Galerie Maria Wettergren

This Paris-based gallery specializing in contemporary Scandinavian design brings an eclectic collection of furniture and artworks stateside this year, featuring a beautifully simple wooden chair, Clips III, by Rasmus Fenhann and an otherworldly light painting by Astrid Krogh called Meadow, 2013. According to Design Miami, the “main interest of the gallery is the interdisciplinary dialogue between design, art, and architecture. New ideas, technologies and materials are combined with the Scandinavian tradition of excellent craftsmanship, giving rise to sculptural and poetic objects and installations.” Embodying this spirit, artist Mathias Bengtsson’s Cellular Chair, 2011, and Growth Chair, 2012, are shaped by amorphous cells or strings of silver and gold metal that hint at the shape of a traditional seat.

Kim Sang Hoon's “Phenomena 2013-010” Table, 2013. © Gallery SEOMI

Gallery SEOMI

With outposts in Seoul and Los Angeles, Gallery SEOMI brings an international perspective to Design Miami with an emphasis on new construction methods shaping furniture design in Korea. In a dramatic fashion that conjures images of the architecture of Zaha Hadid, artist Kim Sang Hoon has crafted a series of fluid metal tables and stools called Phenomena. The pieces of layered metal appear to pull apart and respond to one another in a rippling language of flowing water or with the gesture of a three-dimensional topographic map.

Jean Prouvé's Demountable House 8x8, 1945. © Galerie Patrick Seguin

Galerie Patrick Seguin

The Book

Paris Galerie Patrick Seguin brings a distinct architectural flavor to Design Miami with an exhibition of works by Jean Prouvé. A variety of clean-lined chairs, shelves, and tables by the famous designer are upstaged by the architecturally scaled Demountable House 8x8 (1945), reassembled in Miami as part of the show. The small house of steel and wood features a dramatic wishbone-shaped column on its interior supporting a slightly pitched roof. This isn’t the gallery’s first foray into rebuilding the houses of the French master. In 2012, it assembled Prouvé’s Maison des Jours, 1956, inside its Paris quarters. The gallery specializes in mid-century French masters of design including Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand.

Left to right: Physichromie pour bracelet, 2012; Mini Physichromie, c. 1995; Physichromie, c. 1995 by Carlos Cruz-Diez. © Elisabetta Cipriani

Elisabetta Cipriani

At the opposite end of the scale spectrum, London-based gallery Elisabetta Cipriani, is showcasing a selection of brightly colored, geometrically inspired jewelry by artist Carlos Cruz-Diez. The so-called “wearable sculptures” use parallel bands of color to visually mix in novel ways. Diez is well regarded for his contributions to our understanding of color theory, and was the creator of an architectural installation at Miami’s Marlins ballpark in 2012 that placedcolorful bands across a major pedestrian entry point to the venue. For his presentation of 12 rings, cuffs, and necklaces, Diez shaped fins of color to create dynamically curving gradients that play games with the eye depending on the angle from which the piece is viewed.

George Nakashima's Conoid Bench, 1987 (left), and his Kent Hall Lamp, 1971 (right). © Moderne Gallery

Moderne Gallery

The Book

The Soul of a Tree George Nakashima

Philadelphia’s Moderne Gallery specializes in the American Craft movement of the 20th century and the decorative arts it produced. Chief among the craftsmen in this era was George Nakashima who created refined yet rustic pieces of furniture from knotted and gnarled pieces of wood. His Conoid Bench, 1987, for example, fastens a traditionally crafted seatback onto a large rough-edged plank cut from what was once a massive tree. His Weatherbee End Table, 1968, shows a similar rough-hewn quality as a spiky wooden gnarl is inverted and polished to create a sculptural table.

View a full listing of this year’s galleries here.

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