A new exhibition will open at Yossi Milo Gallery in New York through August 19, 2022. The exhibition explores the connections between Memphis icon Ettore Sottsass and three contemporary artists. They are John Gill, Daniel Gordon, and Emily Mullin.
What is Memphis style
In 1981, represented by postmodernist designer Ettore Sottsass, he gathered a group of like-minded designers to form the "Memphis Group" in Milan, Italy. Memphis was born to oppose the monotonous, austere modernism. In addition to the pop-like bold color matching, they also pay special attention to the use of geometric elements and advocating pattern decoration, pursuing the harmony of decorative arts and design functions, and emphasizing the creation of works of artisanal methods.
Exploring and changing the design language has created many grotesque and symbolic furniture products, with unique design styles, often unexpected and dramatic effects. They get inspiration from Western design, decorative art in the early 20th century, Pop Art, Oriental Art, Third World and other artistic traditions, all of which have given them inspiration and reference.
Because most of the works are presented by hand, the number is limited, and it has not been popularized and developed on a large scale. It only lasted for more than ten years and ended. But it promotes an attitude of daring to imagine and overthrow, breaking conventions and principles, changing historical trends, optimistic and fearless, and has had a wide and far-reaching impact on the design community around the world.
Ettore Sottsass and Daniel Gordon
The works engage in dialogue throughout the gallery, examining the idea of architecture, both materially and conceptually. The work of Brooklyn-based artist Daniel Gordon uses analog and digital processes to transform traditional still lifes. Identify images from the web or from your iPhone camera, then print them out, applying bold colors inspired by designs by Ettore Sottsass. Post-Impressionist still life styles are also incorporated into Daniel Gordon's vibrant palette and composition.
Daniel Gordon is an intermedia artist who uses a combination of collage, sculpture and photography. He grew up in San Francisco and earned his MFA from Yale University in 2006 after earning a BA from Bard College. Gordon is represented by Kasmin Gallery, which plans to host Gordon's first exhibition early next year. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, MoMA PS1 and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, as well as in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and many other institutions. Gordon currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Daniel Gordon has a strong interest in screen segmentation. Through the careful arrangement of scenes, his works present a visual effect between two-dimensional and three-dimensional, whichseems to provide the viewer with an entrance to the absurd world.
The works in the exhibition, sticking to an RGB colour palette, reflect Ettore Sottsass' penchant for bright colours and graphic patterns. With its electric blue vibes, his Blue Still Life with White Peonies, Eggs and Onions (2019), a pigment print with UV lamination, makes the kind of environment that viewers would normally find in a kitchen look surreal.
Ettore Sottsass and Emily Mullin
Emily Mullin's Brooklyn studio creates multimedia sculptures that include brightly colored, intricately patterned ceramic vases and steel shelves of her own design; each playful vessel is adorned with living flowers. Emily Mullin's palette and interpretation of historical forms are most closely linked to the work of Ettore Sottsass, as his glass and ceramic works are often inspired by ancient vessels.
'red I' (2022) is a cherry-coloured fired vase with an intricate handle filled with leafy branches, while Emily Mullin's 'xtravaganza I' (2022) is a green The study, two chartreuse utensils filled with feathery stems on a blue base, powder-coated steel shelves.
Ettore Sottsass and John Gill
John Gill is a well-known ceramic artist whose work is held in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and he teaches at Alfred University, known for its School of Ceramics. Colors and patterns are common in his work, but the three pieces in this exhibition — each made from clay tablets with triptychs — fuse totem-like vessels with Ettore • Sottsass's 1970s and 1980s related architectural works.
Finally, Ettore Sottsass himself is represented by a two-sided stained glass mirror by the Italian company Glas Italia, a blue glass vase by Fontana Arte, a bookcase made of wood and plastic laminate from 1980, and a late high Two pieces of blown glass on the base. The pieces, especially the vases and bookcases, evoke Ettore Sottsass' contributions to Memphis with their bold forms and strong colors.
The exhibition offers a variety of approaches, but under the common thread of colour, texture and pattern, the compilation is both provocative and refreshing.
The story of Ettore Sottsass
On September 14, 1917, Ettore Sottsass was born in Innsbruck, Austria, his mother's hometown. His father was a famous Italian architect (Ettore Sottsass Sr). Ettore Sottsass spent most of his childhood in the forests of Trentino, Italy.
As an adult, Ettore Sottsa went to Milan and then around the world. But time in the forest looms large in his life's creations. Ettore Sottza's father was a pragmatist architect, but he chose a very different approach. He once said: "When I was young, all we heard was functionalism, functionalism, functionalism. Functionalism is not enough. Design should also be sensual and stimulating."
Ettore Sotesa moved to Turin in 1929, where he had the best architecture school in Italy, and his father wanted him to become an architect. Although he preferred painting, he followed the wishes of the architect's father and received a degree in architecture from the Politecnico di Torino in 1939.
Ettore Sotesa, however, was called into the Italian army as soon as he graduated, and spent World War II in a concentration camp in Yugoslavia, where he worked with his father in post-war housing reconstruction. In 1946, he moved to Milan to curate the craft exhibition of the Italian Triennale "Triennale". For the next ten years, Sottsass continued to curate and pursue painting, participated in the writing of the architecture magazine "Domus", and designed the stage sets.
In 1957, as art advisor to Poltronova, designed a series of furniture that provided inspiration and references to the experiments of the radical architectural movement.
Ultrafragola was designed by Torre Sotesa for Poltronova in New York in 1970. The curved outline suggests long curly hair, and the wavy shell reveals layers of pink light, and the erotic feeling is very strong, which also represents his desire to break the social norms of the time.
Karl Lagerfeld bought one and put it at home, and Nicolas Ghesquière, the design director of Louis Vuitton, has the same style. Opening Ceremony was the first to put the mirror in the store, and soon Nordstorm bought ten. And Hotel Amour in Paris, France, which is full of ambiguity (rated by Trip Advisor as the best hotel for couples to stay, next to the Moulin Rouge) also installed this mirror in the room.
The Valentine typewriter came out in 1970, and Abitare magazine described it as "reminiscent of a poet taking it out to the country on a quiet Sunday to write poetry, or a brightly colored, charismatic piece in an apartment. Decorative objects." Bold red is unimaginable in modernist design pieces, whichcan reflect the shouting and resistance of young people who were the main consumer at that time for dull and boring design products, and the strong desire of the young generation for personalized and emotional design.
Two years later, Ettore Sottsass, 60, formed a new group, Memphis, with Branzi and other young designers including Michele De Lucchi, Aldo Cibic, George Sowden, Matteo Thun and Nathalie du Pasquier. And active until 1988, their designs influenced generations of designs for the next four decades. The name Ettore Sottsass has since been closely associated with Memphis. The name has since been closely associated with Memphis.
"Memphis" aims to break the Bauhaus minimalist design that was popular at the time, and bring a fresh and exciting innovation to the already visually tired public. For the young designers of the era, Memphis freed them from the dry rationalism they had been taught in college. In the years that followed, other young and talented international designers joined the project, including Andrea Branzi, Shiro Kuramata, Arata Isozaki, Masanori Umeda and Hans Hollein "Hans Hollein".
The designed Carlton bookshelf, if it is measured according to the principle of functionalism, that is, the bookshelf can maximize the storage of more books, this bookshelf is obviously a non-conforming design. Disproportionate shelf partitions and dimensional space and irregular partition shapes are very unfavorable for the placement and storage of books. The grotesque shape undoubtedly increases the difficulty and cost of mass production.
However, it is precisely such a bookshelf that does not conform to the scale and scale that completely refreshes people's perception of existing bookshelves: far from the conventional understanding of bookshelves in daily life, they are quasi-arts with aesthetic significance that can exist independently and coexist with the environment.
Article Source:艺术与设计
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