Following the run-away, smashing success of Design Miami’s satellite event ‘Craft Punk’ presented during last year’s Salone del Mobile, Design Miami/ is continuing its fertile collaboration with FENDI by staging ‘Design Vertigo’, a series of site-specific installations that invite the public to look at design from a vanguard perspective – literally.
The joint partnership between Design Miami/ and FENDI represents a shared and common vision that both parties are keen to expand upon: exploring how people see, approach and interact with design, and to continue presenting exhibitions that support young talent. A fashion brand that likes to take an audacious out-of-the-box approach – FENDI is solidifying its reputation as a strong supporter of culture, pushing the boundaries and encouraging the cross-pollinating of different creative fields outside fashion, to show designers in a different context.
Like ‘Craft Punk,’ ‘Design Vertigo’ is conceived as a unique, interactive happening that will completely transform Spazio FENDI into a transgressive design theatre, featuring a new commission from distinguished Swiss artist Felice Varini, along with new work by three emerging studios practicing between the boundaries of traditional design disciplines: rAndom International, Graham Hudson and Beta Tank. Together these projects reflect the extreme variety – the nearly schizophrenic multitude of perspectives – that characterizes design production today.
The first installation, “Elisse nel trapezio,” created by Felice Varini, will be an anamorphic perspective painting. What appears to be a chaotic jumble of lines and shapes on first glance will resolve into an orderly composition when visitors view the work from a specific vantage point. For decades, Varini has been capturing the imagination of audiences around the world with site-specific works that employ traditional painting techniques to engage the architecture of public and private spaces in extraordinary ways. Through Design Vertigo, Varini’s work will be placed in dialogue with contemporary design practice and act as a metaphor for contemporary design culture.
Visitors will next encounter rAndom International’s interactive light installation. Although still quite young, this studio is making a name for itself with technologically innovative digital creations that combine the objectives of both art and design with a progressive use of programming expertise. For ‘Design Vertigo,’ rAndom International will present an LED light wall. This work of ‘functionless’ design will invite visitors to play, confounding visitors’ perception of motion and depth as it reacts to their movements.
The next Design Vertigo experience will be a multi-story ‘material’ construction created by emerging sculptor Graham Hudson – whose work can be viewed simultaneously as architecture, furniture and sculpture, and has been presented within both art and design contexts as creations that are both functional and functionless. Entitled, “An insignificant extension in space and a considerable extension in time” – suspended mannequins, portraying perched ladies, donning vintage FENDI furs, previously worn by the likes of Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow in famous films, provide an elegantly random quality to the proceedings, as glimpsed from a theatre box structure fabricated from scaffolding components – which acts as both an observation deck and a site for chance social encounters. Part participatory sculpture, part industrial craft, this hybrid work provides an unusual, yet elegant setting, that gives a performance art quality to the entire project that further encourages visitor participation – allowing visitors to climb into it, get a drink at the bar and view the happenings at Spazio FENDI from different vantage points above the exhibition floor.
Design Vertigo visitors will end their journey through Spazio FENDI amid an immersive total environment designed by Berlin-based studio Beta Tank. This relational social space – “Beta Space” – represents the next evolution in the studio’s playful engagement with the neuro-scientific fields of sensory substitution and experimental technology. Furnished with mind-bending optical patterns and illusions that wrap the walls and floors along with various psychedelic props and characters, this astonishing installation is intended to encourage a lively and fun experience in celebration of human perception, social interaction and an ever-widening definition of design.
“With Craft Punk, FENDI has shown how craftsmanship and experimentation become one and are a vital part of our identity,” states Silvia Venturini Fendi, Accessories Creative Director, “paving the way to Stereo Craft and to a new perspective where traditional boundaries of fashion, design, music and art have been redesigned and these worlds fused together.”
“In such an historical period,” she continues, “when everything is questioned, we decided to continue this path through Design Vertigo, where experimentation is perceived in an innovative and provocative way, as viewers will interact and become themselves part of the installations, reaching their full completion.”
“We felt that the time was right to present a project that shines a light on new work being created today outside of traditional definitions and that is borne of unpredictable collaborations and intersections between creative fields,” comments Design Miami/ Director, Ambra Medda. “While we may not know where this creative explosion is leading us, we’re excited to be a part of this highly productive moment when people are more open-minded and creatives are empowered, not constrained, by history.”
“Having the opportunity to develop a project within the context of Salone is a real treat, because it allows us to have a face-to-face dialogue with the international design community and to reflect on how design practice is evolving,” comments Design Miami/ Associate Director, Wava Carpenter. “We selected this group of artist-designers because we wanted to highlight the experimental edges of contemporary design and to encourage Salone visitors to appreciate how fun and exciting it can be to play with the possibilities.”
Today’s culture is seeing a proliferation of approaches and styles, fuelled by intense cross-pollination between the creative fields of art, architecture, design and fashion – further boosted by the information highway, new technologies and freedom of expression. With its emphasis on real life problem-solving through inventive thinking and material control, the design field is particularly well placed at the nexus of these borrowings, blurrings and transgressions. With old definitions no longer relevant, the design community is looking for new ways of understanding and defining itself. The wealth of possibilities is dizzying. Design Vertigo is a timely statement about embracing, even relishing, this momentary chaos with faith that clarity will come. For now, we must actively encourage fresh perspectives, flights of the imagination and the spontaneous encounters that occur when we come together as a community.
THE DESIGNERS:
- Felice Varini: Born in 1952 in Locarno, Switzerland, Felice Varini is an artist known for his geometric perspective-localized paintings using projector-stencil techniques. Felice paints on architectural and urban spaces, such as buildings, walls and streets.
- rAndom International: After meeting at the Royal College of Art in 2002, Stuart Wood, Flo Ortkrass and Hannes Koch founded the London-based collective rAndom International with a vision to create engaging and experimental art and design projects. Working within the frontiers of innovation across science, art and design, rAndom International has developed a series of increasingly experimental installations that aim to re-interpret the ‘cold’ nature of digital-based work by providing the viewer with the opportunity to have a more hands-on and aesthetic experience with technology.
- Graham Hudson: Graham Hudson received an MFA from Royal College of Art, London in 2002 and lives and works in London. Hudson’s work operates across sculpture, architecture and design, producing both objects and installations in a variety of media. Recent solo exhibitions include ZINGERpresents, Amsterdam (2010) and Monitor, Rome (2009).
- Beta Tank: Beta Tank is a design practice based in Berlin and London, founded by Michele Gauler and Eyal Burstein to take on large, complex social and technological issues and translate them into easily understood objects and services. Their projects develop from a deep interest in how humans adapt to progress in their everyday lives. While Beta Tank’s designs may seem fantastic or magical they are always based on available technologies and address timeless human behaviors and needs.
About Design Miami/
Design Miami/ is the most prominent and substantive forum for international design, representing a convergence of commerce and culture. Its annual shows in Basel, Switzerland (June) and Miami, USA (December) bring together the most influential designers, collectors, dealers, curators and critics from around the world. For more information please visit www.designmiami.com.
FENDI
The house of FENDI was established in Rome in 1925 with the opening of the first FENDI boutique – a handbag shop and fur workshop. Soon winning international acclaim, FENDI emerged as a brand renowned for its elegance, craftsmanship, innovation and style. In 1965 began the collaboration with Karl Lagerfeld as creative director of the women’s and fur collections, and this collaboration continues today. In 1992 Silvia Venturini Fendi was appointed FENDI’s accessories creative director and in 2000 she created the menswear line. The LVMH Group acquired FENDI in 2000, becoming its majority shareholder by 2004. In the same year Michael Burke was appointed FENDI president and CEO. Today FENDI is synonymous with tradition, experimentation and creativity. In 2007 FENDI was the first ever fashion house to stage a catwalk show on the Great Wall of China. FENDI’s involvement in the arts has included supporting a major exhibition of Loris Cecchini, held at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris as well as touring to Peking, Shanghai and New York. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Baguette, FENDI commissioned leading artists including Jeff Koons, Rachel Feinstein, Tom Sachs, Sylvie Fleurie, Matali Crasset, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Subodh Gupta to create one-off pieces reinterpreting the Baguette. In December 2008 FENDI supported the Design Miami/ Design Talks who saw the participation of Fernando & Humberto Campana, Arik Levy, Tom Dixon, Paul Cocksedge, Julia Lohmann, Ted Noten, ArandaLash, Ross Lovegrove, John Maeda. In April 2009 FENDI has partnered again with Design Miami/ , in Milan during the Salone del Mobile, presenting “Craft Punk”, a series of Design Performances in celebration of the importance of originality, creativity and freedom of expression in design where 10 young emerging designers, like Nacho Carbonell, Peter Marigold, Simon Hasan, Raw Edges, have been called to live, relate, work and create unique Limited Edition design pieces in front of the public with FENDI discarded Selleria leather and other materials all within Spazio Fendi. FENDI’s collaboration with Design Miami/ has continued in the December 2009 edition, with the “Stereo Craft Design Performances”. Thanks to a collaboration between Silvia Venturini Fendi and the technologically pioneering designer Moritz Waldemeyer, uniquely customized Selleria leather and fur Gibson Guitars have been created, with laser lights that interacted with a video wall while played live from the American rock band OK Go.
FENDI has more than 180 boutiques in 26 countries around the world.
For more information please visit www.fendi.com.