05/06/2012

Stedelijk Museum – The New Identity

Stedelijk Museum – The New Identity

On the 28th March the definite public opening of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam was finally announced. The grand opening is scheduled for the 23rd September 2012, and it’s to be followed by a grand retrospective exhibition of Mike Kelley’s work. 
Years of delays on the construction site raised a lot of criticism from both the press and the public, and finally at the end of last month it was possible for the curious and the art hungry people in Amsterdam to take a tour in the new building. The new museum was slightly anticipated by a new corporate identity, and already debated projects by Mevis and van Deursen.


The now almost 70-year-old museum was initiated with the direction of Willem Sandberg – an incredible graphic designer himself – in 1945, and the graphic design that followed each of the museum’s exhibitions has become almost as important as the exhibition itself. Designers allowed to place their hands on those projects weren’t that many. After Sandberg’s tyranny Wim Crouwel came along, designing the modernist ‘SM’ identity that stood proudly until 2010.

It should have been followed by Experimental Jetset’s SMCS logo, but it was actually replaced by the capital T designed by Mevis and van Deursen for Temporary Stedelijk. 
Mevis and van Deursen’s logo might seem a bit goofy at the first glance for hard-core modernist habitues. It plays with the iconic idea of the capital initials, as with the Temporary Stedelijk’s capital T, filling it with the museum’s full denomination. Hence, it becomes both an image, an icon and almost a phrase. After the initial moment of wonder you can’t but be amazed how Mevis and van Deursen manage to surprise each and every time.

Rujana Rebernjak

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04/06/2012

Warming Up For Contemporary Art Summer 2012

Warming Up For Contemporary Art Summer 2012

The exciting summer season of art opened its doors on the 2nd June, with Manifesta 9: the only traveling European biennale dedicated to contemporary art that – after Rotterdam, Luxembourg, Ljubljana, Frankfurt, Donostia-San Sebastián, Trentino-Alto Adige and the Region of Murcia – chose this year to takes place in the restored Waterschei Mine complex, located in the industry-leading city of Genk, Belgium.

Curated by the Mexican art critic, curator and historian Cuauthémoc Medina with associate curators Katerina Gregos and Dawn Ades, the concept of the 9th edition of Manifesta is based on the dialogue between art, history, geographical and social issues, focusing on the rise and the decline of industrial capitalism during the modern age. A former coal-mining site, which lies deep in the green fields, becomes the charming venue of a critical reflection that analyses and retraces the role of memory and cultural heritage in modern and post-modern societies.

Through the interpretations and critiques made by numerous past and contemporary artists around the object/metaphor ‘Coal’ – from the genius of Marcel Duchamp to Marcel Broodhaers’ ironic approach, from Bernd and Hilla Becher’s photographic testimony to the ‘energetic’ neon sculpture by Claire Fontaine and the video installation by the young Italian artist Rossella Biscotti – Manifesta 9 plumbs the depths of the modernity both by recording and transforming the outlook of social development between new and historical, local and global.

Manifesta 9, which will run until the 30th September, is just the first event on an art lover’s calendar. Our tour goes from Belgium to Germany, more precise: to Kassel, where another world’s leading art show will open next week. From the 9th June until the 16th September, it’s the turn of dOCUMENTA 13 – this year under the direction of the global citizen and art connoisseur Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev – that traditionally comes back every five years to last for exactly 100 days. The event, which usually attracts thousands of people (in 2007 visitors were 750.000) in spite of the small size and the isolated location of the host city, will present a survey of new artistic trends. Thanks to the works by more than 150 artists, and to a variety of collateral events spread around the city, dOCUMENTA affirms itself as one the hottest destinations of the international contemporary art summer.

The countdown has started even for the icing on the cake of this season: Art Basel, the kermesse where the top representatives of art and design gather together from all over the world to show off their masterpieces in Switzerland. Art Basel hosts over 300 leading galleries and more than 2500 artists – from old masters to emerging talents. It will open on the 14th June and it will run until the 17th, being a byword for art excellence accompanied, as each year, by smaller fairs (among which Volta, Liste and Scope and great shows.

2012 holds the turn of Jeff Koons at Fondation Bayeler, Gerrit Rietveld at Vitra Design Museum, Tatlin at Tinguely and the artist nominated for Turner prize 2011 Hilary Lloyd at Kunstmuseum (just to mention a few).

Enjoy the art season!

Monica Lombardi

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31/05/2012

Depicting Fragrances

Depicting Fragrances

Design has always been a fundamental element in the process of creating a new perfume. The bottle, which contains the essence, very often becomes its symbol; the image that gets fixed in people’s visual memory and turns itself into a key factor for establishing and furthering its identity.

With Acqua di Giò in 1996, Giorgio Armani contributed to change the fashion approach of contemporary men, who are more and more focused on the details of their personal and casual style. After sixteen years, the renowned brand presents a new fragrance: Acqua di Giò Essenza, a more intense and sensual version of the original scent, which owes its appearance to Alberto Morillas’ nose, and embodies the spirit and the characteristics of the 21st century man.

The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera through Giancarla Ghisi’s words – accompanied by Karin Kellner‘s pencil – retraced the main steps of the history of masculine perfume. 2DM’s illustrator, with her delicate and romantic mark along with her peculiar sensitivity, borrows the key elements of master perfumers to depict some of the best-known essences ever. Jasmine flowers, rosemary branches, violets, lemons and bergamots surrounded the bottles of Dior‘s Eau De Savage and Issey Miyake‘s L’Eau d’Issey, both of them dominated by the new scent of Armani.

Once again the expressive power of Karin’s drawings joins the allure of perfume world, giving birth to a marriage with a perfect and total harmony.

From the Bureau – Image Karin Kellner

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29/05/2012

Found Muji

Found Muji

Muji is a worldwide known brand famous for denying having a brand identity at all. Or at least, hiding it. The power of the un-branded, almost thirty-year-old company has always been the strong focus on the product quality. The quality pairs with extreme simplicity, a ‘supernormal’ quality – as Naoto Fukasawa, a company associate, and Jasper Morrison would put it. 
The designs Muji has put on the market have never been publicized by its famous designers’ names, although the company wouldn’t have hard time showing off, seeing the impressive list of its collaborations.

Among the designers working with Muji, you can read names like Konstantin Grcic, Enzo Mari and the two design superheroes mentioned above. These pop-stars of design have conceived some of the simplest objects of our everyday use such as an umbrella or a mug. Not quite a posh assignment for this elite of creative engineers.


As we may argue endlessly about how this un-branded strategy has actually created one of the most powerful contemporary brands, Muji has moved forward to developing a new project. Muji has taken the role of the collector and the distributor of some of the finest local crafts, thus promoting a kind of design heritage handed down to us from the tradition of our popular culture. 
The found collection comprises a series of jugs, brooms, toys, ceramic sculptures and gardening kits among others, all so essential and well conceived that they might have actually been designed by some of the Muji’s creatives. The utmost proof of the importance this concept represents for the no-brand company is the opening of the Found shop at the first ever Muji Tokyo store in Aoyama.


Rujana Rebernjak – Images Muji

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22/05/2012

Solution Series

Solution Series

Even though graphic designers are keen on thinking that their profession makes a difference and that it’s politically, ethically and culturally relevant in our society, it’s a rather uncommon phenomena seeing this idealistic approach actually at work. Especially when it comes to Italy, graphic design is still considered an ‘artistic’ outtake on the artifacts we encounter on a daily basis. On the other hand, designers themselves generally profess a more politically active attitude but aren’t capable of actually putting it into practice.

There are, however, a few practitioners that try to take the matter in their own hands. One of the projects that was born from this kind of approach is Solution Series – a series of books published by Sternberg Press and curated by Ingo Niermann with the precious contribution by Zak Kyes (a graphic designer we have already praised in one of our articles).

The Solution Series has quite a definite – and also a bit pretentious – ring to it. What it does is developing highly critical cultural proposals in a tumultuous era of geopolitical instability that should function as stimulus for rethinking some of the urgent problems present in the area the single book refers to. Some of the titles in the series are “Finland: The Welfare Game” by Martti Kalliala with Jenna Sutela and Tuomas Toivonen, “The Book of Japans” by musical artist and writer Momus, “United States of Palestine-Israel” by Joshua Simon, “America” by Tirdad Zolghadr and “The Great Pyramid” edited by Ingo Niermann and Jens Thiel.

Ironically by using the word ‘solutions’ the editor mocks the well-established critical discourse by ‘inviting the authors to develop an abundance of compact and original ideas for countries and regions contradicting the widely held assumption that after the end of socialism human advancement is only possible technologicaly’.

The latest outtake related to the project is “Solution Greece?”, an exhibition of the work developed by Kyes for the Solution Series. Hosted by Ommu, a bookshop and project space situated in Athens, the exhibition tries to demonstrate the power of cultural production and the kind of solution it might offer in a country that is coping with a difficult political and economic crisis. Finally a socially and politically relevant, even though slightly utopian, approach of contemporary graphic design practice towards the problems of our society.

Rujana Rebernjak – Images courtesy of Sternberg Press

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18/05/2012

A Plus A – Centro Espositivo Sloveno

A Plus A – Centro Espositivo Sloveno

Venice is the world known city of art and culture, where not only you can visit historical sites like Gallerie dell’Accademia or Scuola Grande di San Rocco tracing the history of fine arts, but where every year worldwide visitors rush to see La Biennale di Venezia. Since the buzz around Biennale usually fades out after the opening, the city quickly returns to its natural slow pace. Fortunately enough, the old beauty has still some eager enterpreneurs that try keeping the city alive all year long.


One of those, if not the only truly worth mentioning, is A Plus A, Centro Espositivo Sloveno. The gallery, situated in one of the most beautiful campos in Venice – Campo Santo Stefano – has quite a full schedule all year long. Besides hosting the Slovenian pavilion during the Biennale, following all of their events you might leave you with a full agenda. Dubious as you may be wondering whether quality shouldn’t be confused with quality, A Plus A can guarantee for both.

Not only it organizes successful exhibitions, the space is also committed to promoting culture in all of its faces, thus hosting concerts, 24-hour performances, talks and a course for curators named Corso in Pratiche Curatorial e Arti Contemporanee.

We have had the occasion to visit the gallery last week during the opening of “Robotica” exhibition involving the exploration of robots as holders of innovation and cultural content. The upcoming events, on the other hand, include “No Title Gallery” collective exhibition and a book presentation. The latter one is the product of Ignacio Uriarte‘s collaboration with Automatic Books, a young but productive independent publishing house based in Venice. The book is named Three Hundred Sixty and will be presented during a brief talk with the author next thursday.

If you find yourself in Venice any time of the year and the marble and pietra d’istria aren’t the only things you’re in search for, pop by at A Plus A for a nice chat with its director Aurora Fonda while taking a peak at their first quality projects.

Rujana Rebernjak

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15/05/2012

Torsten and Wanja Söderberg Prize 2012

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Torsten and Wanja Söderberg Prize 2012

Sigurd Bronger is a Norwegian jewelry engineer working in Oslo, Norway, and today at 11am he was announced as the winner of 2012 Torsten and Wanja Söderberg Prize at Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg, Sweden. The objective of the prize, which was founded in 1992, is to award, promote and encourage Nordic design, fashion and artistic work, as well as strengthen the Nordic values on the field. The prize and its committee also contribute to the work of further deepening the collaborations between the Nordic countries.

With heaps of solo- and group exhibitions all around the world, several design awards, a long bibliography and by appearances as professor, guest speaker and workshop leader from Stockholm to Tel Aviv, Sigurd Bronger has made name for himself in the jewelry sphere. He is a designer who works with delicate details referencing to the early 20th century’s mechanical industrialism. An era in which the objects revealed their functions -unlike the digital systems of today- and could be stripped down to their bare essentials where every fascinating part of a former machine could be enjoyed. His pieces play with humour and materials, and even though they are an allusion to a ‘boy’s dream’ with gearwheels and precision mechanism, his jewelry is somehow gender crossing.

In Sigurd Bronger’s world, time itself is treated as a material, and he only creates about three or four new pieces a year. The selection of precious metals, brass, diamonds and wood is carefully done, and later genuinely worked over. The designs, which are presented in remarkable hand-made packaging, take the viewer back to an early industrial design language and to the innovations of the Renaissance, without letting go of future visions.

“When I look at and touch Bronger’s jewelry, I feel like a young boy at a funfair or caught up in a wonderful mechanical fairytale world – I forget everything else around me. Sigurd Bronger’s design art changes my perception of what is possible”, says Ted Hesselbom, who is the head of the prize committee.

Sigurd Bronger will, besides an exhibition at the Röhsska Museum, be awarded with SEK 1.000.000 -which at the moment is the highest design prize in the world- decided by a jury consisting of representatives within design and fashion world in the five Nordic countries; Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. Previous winners of the Torsten and Wanja Söderberg Prize are, among others, the noted Finnish designer Harri Koskinen (most famous for his Block Lamp, exhibited in MoMA in New York) and Danish fashion designer Henrik Vibskov, a 2001 Central Saint Martin’s graduate.

Lisa Olsson Hjerpe – Image courtesy of Röhsska Museet

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01/05/2012

Painting and Jugs

Painting and Jugs

Recently in the contemporary design and applied arts world we have seen quite a few phenomena of massively successful collective productions. By collective in this case we mean a duo, usually a duo of two quite genius people that manage to take photos, design objects or garments, produce books, build stuff with their own hands and much more. On the contrary of the notion of a solitary artist that retreats himself in isolation and self-centered thinking in order to produce art, these new artist/designers/producers, call them as you like, work much better in couples.

So it’s not just a simple coincidence that the Swiss Institute in New York is dedicating an exhibition to two highly productive young artist couples. “Painting and Jugs” is an exhibition that celebrates the potential of collaborative production, although expressed through two different forms: the painting and ceramics production. The painting couple are Linus Bill and Andrien Horni, while the ceramics are from Bastien Aubry and Dimitri Broquard. The first couple met last year while working on a magazine, irregularly published by Horni, while the second one met ten years ago when they started working as graphic designers, commonly known as FLAG.

The latter couple is the one that seems to arise more curiosity. Not because they are better artists, but because they also belong to that new and extremely particular category of graphic designers that are also artist/illustrators/producers. Although the impressive list of their graphic projects include clients like Kunsthalle St. Gallen, Swiss Institute and Institute Mode Design, Aubry and Broquard- like most contemporary graphic designers- find the world of graphics quite limited and look for escape in pottery making and clay. Apparently with a huge success.

Check the exhibition at Swiss Institute by the 3rd of June.

Rujana Rebernjak – Image courtesy of Swiss Institute and Aubry/Broquard

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23/04/2012

Waffles for a Design Hangover

Waffles for a Design Hangover

Deep breath. Salone 2012 is over, and now Milan can go back to her usual beguiling, mysterious, grey self. It’s been a massive overdose of design shot straight to the veins, louder and more brashly than the years before, as marketing continues to merge wholesale with what was once an unrestricted orgy of ideas. Parties and plastic, kitchens and corporate sponsors. So, the stark lull that usually follows design’s biggest event here – a time at which Milan seems like a ghost town in comparison – is the perfect time to reflect upon the state of design behind the flash and fashion that inevitably has massive implications for both the built and natural environments. Did any instant classics emerge this time out? What does Milan mean nowadays? And, can we be hopeful for the near-future of design?

Our design editor, Rujana Rebernjak, waded through every last inch of the city over the course of the week and was almost universally disappointed. The lo-fi events at the Fabbrica del Vapore were a breath of fresh air, led by Alessandro Mendini’s Milano si autoproduce, and were a welcomed escape from the buzzing commercialism of the fiera and Zona Tortona. But overall, these events were conspicuous in their infrequency, and in their being relegated to a ghetto in a far corner of the city. This was reinforced by the myriad exhibitions by Europe’s top design schools, which led us (but certainly not only us) to question the sorry state of Italian design education. Standout schools from Switzerland, Scandinavia, the UK and elsewhere are producing far and away better designers, and while the great majority of these objects are still produced in Italy’s world-class factories, it has never been clearer that the country is lightyears away from its golden years of frequent lightning bolts of genius. Where are today’s Olivetti Valentine, Lancia Stratos or Fiat Panda, Castiglioni’s gorgeous utilitarianism and off-the-wall genius in the style of the Memphis Collective?

But beyond Italy’s malaise, it seems a dismay at the throwaway, fast fashion zeitgeist of the modern furniture industry we ranted about in last week’s editorial were spot on. Among the more contrarian designers at this year’s event, there was tangible sense of dissatisfaction at the status quo, and several projects made snarky reference to the system they seem to feel trapped within.

At Ventura Runway in Lambrate, we found a tasty tongue-in-cheek project whose commentary probably best captured the discontent , “Sapore dei Mobili” by a Japanese/Portuguese partnership of Ryosuke Fukusada and Rui Pereira. Billed “furniture tasting,” the project is essentially a clever waffle iron that allows its users to crank out (yummy) furniture in series (your own little countertop fabbrica). The designers say that “in this way, when the user gets full of his furniture, he just eats it.” No waste. No guilt. And then he can “start all over again using a different recipe.” That’s certainly some mass production we can deal with. Chocolate! Cinnamon! Berry furniture! With frosting! Or sprinkles!

In any case, the impetus of the Sapore dei Mobili project is part of a wider discourse on design that seems at last to be catching on. It’s one thing for jaded consumers to feel both overwhelmed by the frenetic pace and underwhelmed at the lack of innovation, but designers themselves are even rebelling against their system. Milan has two more years to make a massive impression on the design world before Expo 2015 will force in onto the global stage outside the insular universes of fashion and design. It’s doubtful that those without an emotional connection to the city’s design legacy will be quite as forgiving as every year’s crop of design tourists are. And frankly, this year’s Salone just didn’t do it. Now it’s hangover time. Eat your waffle furniture with tons of butter and syrup, and perhaps next year Salone will have come to its senses.

Tag Christof

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22/04/2012

Salone 2012 – Fabbrica del Vapore

Salone 2012 – Fabbrica del Vapore

After six days of hard work, we can say we have searched almost every inch of the city in order to soak in all the good (and bad) this year’s Salone del Mobile had to offer. We have seen Zona Tortona, Triennale, Lambrate, Spazio Rossana Orlandi, Brera Design District, State University, so one of the last things to see around Milan was Fabbrica del Vapore.

Cited by Stefano Boeri as the only venue that truly offered examples of independent and spontaneous creativity, Fabbrica del Vapore offered three interesting exhibitions.

The first exhibition that was on everyone’s lips is Milano si autoproduce. Promoted by the grand master of italian design Alessandro Mendini, Milano si autoproduce reunites a long list of designers that are both craftsmen, businessmen, gallery managers and creatives. The goal of the exhibition is to develop a new model for contemporary design where anyone can see their projects produced and set on the market. Even though this concept isn’t new, it was interesting to see the amount of auto-producers in Milan. We weren’t completely able to understand the connections between all the pieces in the show, which left us pondering. You could see projects by some of the design superstars like Michele De Lucchi with his Produzione Privata set side by side with a collection of jewelry, which made you question the criteria of the selection.

The second exhibition worth seeing was the second edition of Uncovered exhibition. Entitled Qualities, the exhibition showed the work of Line Depping and Jakob Jorgensen, Elisa Honkanen, Peter Johansen, Elia Mangia and Simone Simonelli. The question that this exhibition tried to answer was ‘ what does quality design mean?’. Whether it is related to its duration, affordance, functionality, sustainability or emotional quality was a problem that these designers tried to answer with their projects.

The third show that made us smile is Low Cost Design created by Daniele Pario Perra. Conceived as an on-going show, Low Cost Design presented a series of interpretations of our daily objects seen from a different perspective.

Our design insight tour unfortunately ends here. Even though we are almost out of strength, we would have liked to show you everything that was happening around Milan in these days. Now we can only wait for the next edition of the Salone del Mobile.

Rujana Rebernjak

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