“Tom Loeser & Wendy Maruyama: Colorama” at Superhouse.
Photo: Matthew Gordon Studio
7 Must-See Collectible Design Shows in November
From a major retrospective honoring the late steel savant Maria Pergay to a husband and wife duo’s first solo exhibition at London’s Gallery Fumi
KAMEH's collection of burned-wood chairs that spark ideas of desert forests. Photo: Courtesy of KAMEH
1. “Editions” in the Dubai Design District (d3) | Dubai
Editions, running through the first week of November and timed to coincide with both Art Dubai and Downtown Design, is the region’s first fair dedicated to limited edition art and design. Photography, prints, and fine art are represented; ceramic exhibitions secure the fair’s international outlook, including a show of Paris-based sculptor Ela Foulon’s fiery creations at Hestia Gallery, and a retrospective of Latin American Kinetic Art by Daniel Samper and Jose Margulis. Edition’s true delights may look closer to home, though: Sharjah’s 1971-Design Space offers Infinite Majlis: A Möbius Strip, a design concept referencing Emerati fire pits, and Dubai’s own KAMEH also brings the heat, with a collection of burned-wood chairs that spark ideas of desert forests.
Neo-Narcissist Mirror. Photo: Courtesy of Hartis
2. “2nd Nature” at the Athens Conservatoire | Greece
The famed Greek firm Pieris.Architects celebrates its 50th anniversary this year by taking over the Athens Conservatoire, a Bauhaus landmark designed by Jan Despo, for a series of projects and installations in collaboration with creative director Dimitris Papazoglou. “2nd Nature” runs through November 16th and offers a retrospective of the firm’s built and unbuilt projects around the world, accompanied with audio installations by sound artist and architect Virna Koutla. But half a century in, Pieries is only getting started, as evidenced by “Breathing Matter,” a section of the show which puts Pieries’ own design objects, like their repurposed marble Kellert Tables, in dialog with artists like sustainable ceramist Todd Marshad, textile whiz Roxane Revon, and luxury brands like Paris’s Hartis, who will show its handcrafted, recycled-leather Neo-Narcissist Mirror.
iMvelaphi is Chuma Maweni's first solo show. Photo: Gerhardt Coetzee & Delaire Graff
3. “Chuma Maweni: iMvelaphi” at Southern Guild | Cape Town
Maweni studied ceramics at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and then founded his own Cape Town studio in 2016, where he’s turned a remarkable talent with clay into a singular body of work on the wheel. iMvelaphi, which opens on November 14th and runs through February 27, 2025, is his first solo show, and takes in a series of concave and convex volumes which explore African circular forms like intsika pillars and ukhamba beer pots. But his ambitions are larger: a 1.5-meter-tall chandelier comprises nine swervy forms and is named Maweni after his grandfather. And they’re also broader, as the ceramist expands his palette in a series of timber tables topped with puzzle pieces of ceramic tile.
Minjae Kim pictured with Everglades Table, Tray of Oysters, Radar Lamp, Chair for Two, and Big Fan Lamp. Photo: Courtesy of Nina Johnson Gallery
4. “Minjae Kim: Ba-Da” at Nina Johnson Gallery | Miami
Fresh off “Residual Energies,” this fall’s triumphant curatorial debut by Camille Okio, Nina Johnson Gallery takes a trip to the sea with its second show by Minjae Kim, on view in the upstairs gallery through November 23rd. Multi-functional furniture brings tidal waves of associations: a console is shaped like a hull and protects a variety of lighting fixtures cloaked in Kim’s signature quilted fibreglass, while a table is both a place for plates and a plate itself, offering ersatz “oysters.” And TBD2020, his recent foray into figurative work, is oceanic in emotion, embodying a young boy made of resin, foam, and plaster, who stoops on a load-bearing wood pedestal as if waiting, expectantly if anxiously, for what will wash up next.
The show’s thirty five works span from early work like 1968’s brushed stainless and mirror polished steel Table Cocktail Carree through 2016’s natural wonder Bronze Tree. Photo: Courtesy of Demisch Danant
5. “Precious Strength | Maria Pergay Across the Decades” at Demisch Danant | New York
The New York gallery honors the self-taught steel savant Maria Pergay, who died last October at age 93, with a major retrospective offering looks at designs both classic and rarely seen. Suzanne Demisch and Stéphane Danant worked with Pergay for more than thirty years, and that intimacy affords the pair the ability to not only select her most emblematic and iconic pieces, but site them in environments inspired by their original settings. The show’s thirty five works span from early work like 1968’s brushed stainless and mirror polished steel Table Cocktail Carree through 2016’s natural wonder Bronze Tree. And installations of personal objects, original sketches, and videos offer very welcome ways to engage with Pergay’s legacy over the course of the show’s run, which ends on November 30th, 2024.
“Tom Loeser & Wendy Maruyama: Colorama.” Photo: Matthew Gordon Studio
6. “Tom Loeser & Wendy Maruyama: Colorama” at Superhouse | New York
In 1980, Wendy Maruyama showed a desk that filled a wood desk’s traditional mortise with purple resin, and design traditionalists lost their minds. Loeser was simultaneously deploying Memphis-esque palettes and geometries for his controversial fine furniture. “Colorama” shows what the pair has been up to since, developing bodies of work that have found their way into collections of institutions around the world without losing their joyful bite. Maruyama confronts the aging process in a series of wall-mounted cabinets, while Loeser transforms seating into sites for people to confront each other, playfully. The result is less retrospective than re-introduction of work both riotous and right on time. “Colorama” is on view at the Superhouse gallery from November 14th through January 11, 2025.
Husband-and-wife duo James Russell and Hannah Plumb mount their first solo exhibition at London’s Gallery Fumi Photo: Rob Crawford for Gallery Fumi and Courtesy of Gallery Fumi.
7. “Rooted”: A Solo Exhibition by JAMESPLUMB at Gallery Fumi | London
Husband-and-wife duo James Russell and Hannah Plumb mount their first solo exhibition at London’s Gallery Fumi, showing work made after the pair moved from London to restore a farmhouse in the Shropshire Hills. As that house became their home, the building’s copper pipework became Copper Roots, a series of bespoke LED fixtures which can switch between lamp- and candle-holders. The pipes move electricity, instead of the water originally flowing through them, as they emerge from concrete fragments the pair unearthed in a barn and then made secure with local lime and sand. The delicate lightsources are on view at the gallery from November 1st through January 25th, 2025.
Cover: “Tom Loeser & Wendy Maruyama: Colorama” at Superhouse.
Photo: Matthew Gordon Studio
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