When Gerrit Rietveld designed his famed Red and Blue Chair in 1917, it wasn’t red and blue at all, but plain, unstained beech wood. Only six years later, after his De Stijl collaborator Bart van der Leck suggested he add bright colors, did Rietveld create the version that went on to make history: red, blue, and yellow on a low black frame. The same is true, in a way, of the Barcelona studio AOO’s new Chair 8, whose first iteration became red, blue, and yellow only after a client saw, and fell in love with, the default rendering colors in the 3-D program used to design it. After making that beta version last summer, studio founder Marc Morro decided to put the chromatic fate of the chair in outside hands once again for a recent exhibition at Alzueta Gallery in Barcelona — inviting Spanish artist Claudia Valsells to envision new color schemes for it based on her works, and displaying both in dialogue, as seen below. Both exercises will inform Morro when, at some point soon, he decides which iteration(s) of Chair 8 to make available to a wider audience.

PHOTOS BY YOSIGO