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Mar 17 2023
Surface
Design Dispatch
Inside Kehinde Wiley’s gripping new show, fiercely feminine vases, and a giant knitted Buckingham Palace.
FIRST THIS
“The metaverse has no limitations other than human ingenuity.”
HERE’S THE LATEST

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Kehinde Wiley’s Gripping New Show Has a “Respite Room”

What’s Happening: If visitors to the American portraitist’s upcoming show at San Francisco’s de Young Museum feel overwhelmed by the harrowing subject matter, they can step out into a “respite room” to regain their composure. Other museums are following suit.

The Download: Touching fine art is forbidden at most institutions, but visitors to this past year’s Venice Biennale were so moved by Kehinde Wiley’s billboard-size paintings and giant sculptures of Black people in crumpled, supine positions that many wept, reaching out to grasp their hands. Wiley completed each of the show’s 25 artworks against the backdrop of the George Floyd killing and Black Lives Matter uprising. In Wiley’s paintings, he illustrates Black people in vibrant, lavish settings that reference religious and mythological Western paintings. In this series, however, each figure is struck down, wounded, resting, or dead.


The exhibition, called “The Archaeology of Silence” and organized by Musée d’Orsay, is opening in the United States for the first time this weekend, at San Francisco’s de Young Museum, in close proximity to neighboring Oakland where the Black Panther Party was formed in the 1960s. Given the harrowing nature of the work, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (a nonprofit comprising both the de Young and the Legion of Honor) is anticipating an emotionally charged response. To ensure the pieces don’t overwhelm visitors, the museum created a “respite room” where they can pause and regain their composure as they absorb the message.

Other institutions are following suit. When a major survey of Philip Guston works landed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, this past year, it handed out statements from a trauma specialist—a “content warning” in internet parlance—alerting visitors to upsetting work ahead. (Guston pivoted from painting flickery abstractions to cartoonish figures donning Ku Klux Klan hoods in 1970.) Likewise, the show’s outing at the National Gallery of Art in Washington was designed so visitors can quickly bypass unsettling pieces.


“Today, we have an expanded notion of harm,” Tom Eccles, executive director of Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies, tells the New York Times. “No museum wants to be in the business of creating a context of harm.” Wiley requested a direct spotlight illuminating the works, which otherwise sit in a darkened gallery. Some may read the presentation as meditative and celebratory; others, as ghostly.

In Their Own Words: “The nuances of the hair-braiding style and nails and phone technology—it’s making it violently present right now,” Wiley says about each artwork’s details. “You start to piece together a story based on your own baggage. That’s the through line throughout all of it—these bodies chopped down.”

Surface Says: Respite rooms sound like something every museum should pursue.

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What Else Is Happening?

Check-Circle_2x Another lawsuit is brewing between Hermès and Mason Rothschild over MetaBirkins.
Check-Circle_2x The Musée Bourdelle in Paris has reopened after a two-year, $5 million restoration.
Check-Circle_2x Using blockchain, Loro Piana is letting customers trace the origins of its wool pieces.
Check-Circle_2x A derelict English farmhouse featuring Banksy’s latest mural has been demolished.
Check-Circle_2x NASA astronauts headed to the moon will sport sleek, next-generation spacesuits.
Check-Circle_2x Hariri Pontarini Architects designs Canada’s first zero-carbon performing arts center.


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DESIGN

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Mimi Shodeinde’s Nrin Vases Are Fierce, Firm, and Feminine

Though largely self-taught in the realm of furniture and product design, Mimi Shodeinde’s sinuous pieces draw their sculptural flair from a wealth of sources spanning historical figures and music to her Nigerian heritage. The latter informed her latest collection, a show-stopping series of vases called Nrin—a word derived from obinrin, the Yoruba word for “female.” To honor their namesakes, the vessels radiate harmonious movement and poetic elegance thanks to flowing cast aluminum that seems to metamorphose the metal into liquid form. Each is anchored by a sturdy wooden column that nods to the African materiality that continually serves as Shodeinde’s North Star.

CULTURE CLUB

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Art Production Fund Channels Couture Summer Camp

Earlier this week, the Art Production Fund took over New York’s landmark Seagram Building to stage its annual gala. Per the night’s theme, guests donned their finest summer camp couture for the evening’s festivities, which included a live auction courtesy of Uovo, a botanical installation by artist Lutfi Janania, and performance art by Brendan Fernandes. Proceeds totaled more than $760,000, which will support the organization’s mission to fund public art projects.

When was it? March 15

Where was it? The Seagram Building, New York

Who was there? Derrick Adams, Tyler Mitchell, Nicola Vassell, Isolde Brielmaier, Cynthia Rowley, and more.

ITINERARY

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Giuseppe Penone: Universal Gestures

When: Until May 28

Where: Galleria Borghese, Rome

What: More than 30 works—including rare and never-before-seen pieces—by the maestro of Arte Povera grace Galleria Borghese’s hallowed halls, revealing intricacies in the relationship between landscape and sculpture while collapsing barriers between past and present.

CURRENTLY COVETING

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Sustainability Meets the High-Seas Style

There’s a reason why F1 champs Fernando Alonso and Nico Rosberg are among those who entrust Sunreef Yachts with their seafaring pursuits. Suave, agile, and tricked out with some of the most cutting-edge solar technology on the planet, the brand’s unabashedly high-end catamarans are in a class of their own.

Credit the vision of CEO and founder Francis Lapp, who combined his engineering expertise with his love for sailing more than 20 years ago after noticing a hole in the market while chartering boats out of Madagascar. From a shipyard in Gdansk, a vibrant port city along Poland’s Baltic coast with a rich naval building heritage, Lapp set out to pioneer an entirely new typology: the catamaran yacht.

Successful models like the 40 Eco and 50 Eco have earned high marks for pairing upscale amenities with eco-minded engineering. Now, the launch of the new 80 Eco represents another leap forward. A scene-stealer on docks and rivieras the world over, the design harnesses the stability and comfort of double-hulled vessels, the speed and square-footage of a yacht, and the skill of sailing.

WTF HEADLINES


Our weekly roundup of the internet’s most preposterous headlines, from the outrageous to the outright bizarre.

“Sushi Terrorist” and Two Accomplices Arrested in Japan After Viral Prank [NPR]

Yeti Recalls Nearly Two Million Soft Cooler Bags Over Magnet Ingestion Hazard [CBS]

Man Sues Buffalo Wild Wings Because He Says Its “Boneless Wings” Are Actually Chicken Nuggets [Insider]

Why Did Scientists Wait So Long to Study the Snake Clitoris? [Smithsonian]

Tom Sachs Promised a Fun Cult [Curbed]

ChatGPT Successor Creates Entire Video Games in Minutes [Independent]

ART

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ICYMI: NFTs Are Having a “Four Seasons Total Landscaping” Moment

It’s difficult to fault digital artist Claire Silver for thinking Paris Blockchain Week wanted to exhibit her work at the Louvre during the conference’s fourth edition in late March. The offer arrived shortly after a series of career wins: Silver signed with talent agency WME, and one of her pieces entered LACMA’s permanent collection this past month when Cozomo de’ Medici—a prolific collector believed to be Snoop Dogg—donated 22 blockchain artworks, including her kintsugi-inspired collage that layers acrylic blooms over an AI-generated face.

Eager to celebrate an ostensible career peak, Silver excitedly tweeted the news about exhibiting in the Louvre’s hallowed halls. Variety picked up the story, leaving NFT expert and New York Times contributor Zachary Small incredulous about her claims. Louvre representatives confirmed his suspicions, and Silver soon clarified (in a now-deleted series of tweets) that Paris Blockchain Week allegedly misrepresented the location of their show: it would take place at Le Carrousel du Louvre, an underground shopping mall nearby, not the Louvre proper. She pulled her work from the show and began assessing other options.

THE LIST

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Member Spotlight: Elish Warlop Design Studio

Elish Warlop Design Studio is a multidisciplinary design firm specializing in lighting and furniture objects. With a background in architecture and construction, Elish takes her unique perspective to merge creativity and design with construction and experimentation. The work blurs the line between art and design, while having utility as it creates light or divides space.

Surface Says: Product designer or installation artist? The lighting and furniture created by Warlop’s studio defies easy categorization, even by the most honed eye. What’s certain is they’re exquisite expressions of material and form.

AND FINALLY

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Today’s Attractive Distractions

Fast casual chain Sizzler is getting a redesign, but keeping the salad bar.

A nonagenarian knitter crafts an enormous replica of Buckingham Palace.

Disused electric car batteries are being repurposed to help power cities.

These female artisans are honoring and reinventing Japanese Noh masks.

               


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