A New Show Takes Inspiration From the Same Idea That Drove Duchamp and the Dadaists

For Hilda Hellström’s latest exhibition at Étage Projects, opening this Friday, the Swedish-born, Copenhagen-based artist looked to a rather unusual source for inspiration: a semi-obscure literary idea known as "pataphysics," popularized by the 19th-century French poet and playwright Alfred Jarry (and once memorably referred to as "your favorite cult artist’s favorite pseudoscience" by Pitchfork). Pataphysics is a philosophy that gives credence to that which exists even beyond the metaphysical realm — in other words, the imaginary, the irrational, and the unreal.
More

An Artist Responds to the Work of Victor Vasarely, Father of the Op-Art Movement

An internationally exhibited conceptual artist working in photography, sculpture, and installation, Oran Hoffmann was invited to the Fondation Vasarely in Aix-en-Provence in 2017, where he sifted through boxes of Vasarely’s tiles, parallelograms, serigraphs, and other ephemera used to inspire and lay the groundwork for the unusual architecture of the foundation and the optically boggling sculptures and spaces within. Hoffmann’s new book is the culmination of a year of research and working with Vasarely’s archives.
More

The Best Thing We Saw in Milan Today, Day 1

One of the first projects we saw this week was a new collection by Bloc Studios, for which the Carrara-based studio collaborated with three of our favorite designers: Odd Matter, Federica Elmo, and Studiopepe, whose collection in
More
Material Lust Independent

Frustrated by the Limits of Design, Material Lust Sets Its Sights on the Art World

Not much had recently been heard from Material Lust until this March, when, after a few quiet years, they popped back on our radar, showing neither at a design gallery nor a furniture show, but at the New York art fair Independent, in a Spring Studios skybox overlooking a maze of gallery booths. Frustrated by the literalness of conversations they were having in the world of furniture design — and with their practice taking an increasingly conceptual turn — the pair made the conscious decision to turn Material Lust from a design brand into an artist collective.
More

Week of October 8, 2018

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: the American designer having a breakout year, the Portuguese design studios flooding our submissions line, and the iconic Norwegian chair that's being re-released in five new on-trend colors.
More

Ellsworth Kelly–Inspired Sculptures in Metal and Glass, By Two of Seattle’s Best Designers

The last time Jamie Iacoli teamed up with glass artist John Hogan, in 2014, it was for a series of lamps and tables released under the banner of Iacoli & McAllister, the Seattle-based furniture company she was running at the time with fellow designer Brian McAllister. Iacoli’s second collaboration with Hogan — three large tabletop sculptures that launched this past May at the Finnish fashion brand Samuji’s Soho flagship — features a similar metal-meets-glass construction, yet nearly everything else has changed.
More

The Best Things We Saw at NADA, The Armory, and Independent

Design is ingrained in us so deeply, it even affects our taste in art; at this week's art fairs in New York, we were consistently drawn to things like plywood sculptures, powder-coated metal wall hangings, antiquity-inspired ceramics, degradé textile panels, the fact that fave artist Mattea Perrotta TURNED A PAINTING INTO A RUG, and, of course, Katie Stout lamps — i.e. things that wouldn't be totally out of place at a design show.
More

In a New Exhibition in Oslo, Eva LeWitt (Yep, That’s Sol’s Daughter) Comes Into Her Own

It can be difficult to approach the work of New York artist Eva LeWitt and not immediately attempt to place it in context with the work of her father, the late, great conceptual artist Sol LeWitt. So it makes sense that LeWitt, for her new exhibition at VI, VII Gallery in Oslo, might try to escape comparison entirely by using materials in such an opaque way that they reframe your initial appraisal of the work — you first must understand what exactly it is you're looking at.
More