Yesterday, as many East Coasters continued to deal with bleak winter weather, Design Miami kicked off in the sunny art-focused city. Gallerists, editors, and other art-seekers quickly flocked to the tent outside the Miami Beach Convention Center to drink in the week’s linchpin design event. Inside the veritable cabinet of curiosities, a handful of booths and their accompanying works stood out. Below, AD PRO reports on the best of the best—from Fendi’s dreamy Roman loggia to Harry Nuriev’s Balenciaga clothing–filled sofa.
Functional Art Gallery’s Experimental Seats
“I simply asked them to make a chair,” Benoit Wolfrom of Berlin’s Functional Art Gallery explains to AD PRO of the group of 12 experimental seats displayed like artworks on one long pedestal. The otherworldly creations he received—easily the most radical showing at the fair—were hardly simple. Shown amid a blue-purple scenography, the exhibition pays homage to Peggy Guggenheim, who debuted Abstract Expressionist painters to the art world in the 1940s. “I think now we are doing the same thing with what was once called design,” Wolfrom says. “Once you strip away the functionality, what is left?” he asks of the fleet of unabashedly irrational seats.
Fendi’s Roman Molds by Kueng Caputo
“We were looking at the relationship between these two ancient materials—brick and cow leather,” Sarah Kueng, one half of the Switzerland-based design firm Kueng Caputo, tells AD PRO. When Fendi tapped the design duo to collaborate for Design Miami, the pair devised a fantastical loggia in the sky filled with colorful furniture. They updated simple bricks with rich glazes and stacked them into low tables, and applied the Italian brand’s signature leather to sheet and corrugated metal, which were formed into more tables and the fantastical fronds of a faux palm tree.
The Future Perfect’s Greatest Hits
“This is our Mariah Carey greatest hits booth,” the Future Perfect gallery director Laura Young tells AD PRO. She’s not wrong. Filled with Floris Wubben’s extruded ceramic confections, a fleet of Nalgona chairs by Chris Wolston (“that means big juicy butt,” Wolston says), and new works by Matthew Day Jackson made from fiberglass, car paint, and Amazon boxes, it’s impossible to choose a favorite.
Broached Commissions’ Architectural Cabinetry
“I see them as architecture,” says Lou Weis of Australian firm Broached Commissions about the collection of complex cabinetry just debuted at Design Miami. “They’re two-dimensional forms that we’ve brought into the third dimension.” The range of case pieces on display is covered in a patchwork of veneer—some from Victorian-era antiques, the other from new, sustainable material. Just like a city street, various architectural eras collide in each piece.
Les Atelier Courbet’s Film-Inflected Leather Furniture
Les Ateliers Courbet’s booth is channeling the brilliant midcentury world of French filmmaker Jacques Tati, having collaborated with his estate to reproduce three iconic furnishings from his 1958 film Mon Oncle with French leatherworkers Domeau & Pérès. With an eye-popping booth designed by James Wall of Thirlwall Design it's an obvious tour de force.
Harry Nuriev’s Balenciaga Sofa
“It’s just like a regular recliner sofa from the ’80s, but we filled it with Balenciaga clothes—off cuts and unsellable stuff,” says Crosby Studios’ Harry Nuriev of the biodegradable plastic sofa he artfully stuffed with high fashion. “Everyone is trying to make new things, but I think it’s interesting to reuse what already exists.”
Daniel Arsham’s Ideal Room for Friedman Benda
When Daniel Arsham acquired his Long Island home—designed by architect Norman Jaffe and featured in Architectural Digest—he was faced with a practical predicament: how to furnish the house’s various rooms. This undertaking become the jumping-off point for his new works he is presenting at Design Miami through Friedman Benda, which are united under the broader precepts of furniture that Arsham would simply want to live among and use himself. Adding further personal resonance to the new designs, Arsham has named each piece after a person or place that’s meaningful to him.
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R & Company’s Five-Pronged Attack
One booth was just not enough for R & Company, which divided its space into five separate areas for this iteration of the fair. Standouts include Rogan Gregory’s sculptural pieces, which are inspired by deep sea life and alien beings. Also of note are Jeff Zimmerman’s pendant works made with James Mongrain at the Corning Museum of Glass, which is known for its state-of-the-art studio space. Finally, works by Katie Stout, the Haas Brothers, Wendell Castle, and José Zanine Caldas round out the gallery’s multifaceted presentation.
Roberto Lugo’s Homage to Two Legends
Wexler Gallery debuts monumental ceramic works by artist Roberto Lugo, whose unmissable Street Shrines, which stand at around five feet tall, pay homage to music giants Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur. “The first time I sat down at the wheel, I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there,” explains the artist, who grew up in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood. “I want to make work that can engage with the community where I came from.”
Rodman Primack’s Gallery Debut
AD100 designer Rodman Primack, the longtime executive director and chief creative officer of Design Miami, is switching things up this year. After stepping into the role as global ambassador for the fair, he is now, for the first time, an exhibitor—and showcasing a colorful selection of works from Ago Projects, the gallery he and partner Rudy Weissenberg have founded in their new hometown: Mexico City. One of the most refreshing components of the show, their booth feels layered and decorated. Insides, colorful works from Mexico City talents such as Fernando Laposse, Daniel Valero, and Pedro Reyes are showcased.
Cristina Grajales’s Presentation of Robert Wilson’s Glass Work
“We need to show America that the greatest living theater director can come from Waco, Texas,” gallerist Cristina Grajales says to AD PRO. Grajales’s unconventional booth showcases scenography and glassworks by director Robert Wilson, made in collaboration with the Corning Museum of Glass. “It’s a great American story,” she says of the transportive exhibition of cast glass pyramids and blown glass deer (the largest of which take seven glass masters to make). The works are intended to capture the artist’s complicated feelings about deer hunting as a child with his father.
Converso Modern’s Reinvigorated Borsani Designs
Last year around this time, a friend gave Converso Modern cofounder Lawrence Converso a tip: A massive collection of bespoke furniture, mostly by the 20th-century Italian architect Osvaldo Borsani, was coming up for auction. Previously housed in the Palm Beach mansion of Joseph Akston, publisher of Arts Magazine and husband of the woman behind Q-tips, Ziuta Gerstenzang, the collection included a pair of lacquered side tables wrapped in ocean blue leather and a sleek leather desk with swooping brass legs—both prototypes for Borsani’s brand, Tecno. Converso snapped up as many of the pieces as he could and tapped friend (and AD100 designer) Billy Cotton to help him re-envision the iconic collectors’ home at Design Miami. Set amid calamine pink popcorn walls and pale-green tile floors and fireplace (inspired by one that Lucio Fontana created for another Borsani project), the long lost masterworks have been catching the eyes of a handful of major collectors in town for the fairs.
Porky Hefer’s Molecular Pods at Southern Guild
It seems the future is now. South African gallery Southern Guild presented a strong—and memorable—group of works within its allotted space. Chief among them were Porky Hefer’s Molecules—a series of suspended leather pods that feel both retro and futuristic at once. Also on display were works by Zizipho Poswa, Rich Mnisi, and more.
Jay Sae Jung Oh’s Leather Cord Sculptures at Salon 94
At Salon 94, sculptural pieces by Jay Sae Jung Oh were a standout. The works were made from found objects wrapped in leather cord and juxtaposed against Gaetano Pesce drawings and paintings, as well as his iconic Pratt chairs.
Brecht Wright Gander’s Todd Merrill Studio Presentation
“I was never a city person,” designer Brecht Wright Gander told AD in a recent interview. And yet, the Rhode Island native has been (one of) the talks of the Florida metropolis this week. Jagged and colorful, his light fixtures and floor-based works on view thanks to Todd Merrill Studio are an undeniable delight.
