In a dialogue across five continents, with participation at international museums like Centre Pompidou in Paris, the MET in New York, Fondazione ICA in Milan, or the most highly acclaimed art-design events such as Design Miami (from 1 to 5 December 2021) and Salon Art+Design (New York, from 11 to 15 November 2021), Friedman Benda has always stood out for a critical vision of design history. A gallery that through publications, exhibitions and the opening of Design Dialogues – a weekly series of online interviews with architects, designers, critics and curators – presents the pioneering exponents of artistic design.
The protagonists are the works of well-known worldwide talents, a long list of names that includes Michael Anastassiades, Daniel Arsham, Estudio Campana, Paul Cocksedge, Misha Kahn, Kawsxcampana, Joris Laarman, Ettore Sottsass, Carmen D’Apollonio, Najla El Zein, Samuel Ross, just to indicate a few.
In the New York headquarters at Chelsea, Jennifer Olshin and Mark Benda present installations on contemporary design through artifacts with an eclectic, variegated aesthetic approach. One example is the first solo show by Ini Archibong, on view until 2 November 2021, after four years of collaboration – still ongoing – with the gallery. With the evocative title “Hierophany”- from the Greek, meaning a manifestation of the sacred – the complete body of Archibong’s works expresses his vision, a synthesis of various passions: global cultures, philosophy, mathematics, mythology, religions and his Nigerian ancestry.
Objects that narrate life experiences, crossed by dualities of elements like past and future, personal and collective, opacity and transparency, opposition and reconciliation, global and local, physicality and the intangible. “An object – Ini Archibong explains – should communicate an idea to the people who come into contact with it: it is a three-dimensional poem… that stands up!” An exquisite combination that triggers imperceptible forces and energies: immersed in light, color, sound and form, his pieces encourage a multisensory experience conveyed by materials like blown glass, obsidian and marble. “I’m pleasantly surprised when I see a new material or a material used in a new way that makes me feel something that I’ve been trying to capture,” Archibong says. “The stories are already there latent in the back of my mind, but then there are the poignant moments of those stories that I’m on the lookout to illustrate. A new material means being able to tell a story I haven’t told before.”
Coordinated with the exhibition at Friedman Benda, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will present the debut – on 5 November – of its recent acquisition by Ini Archibong, for the exhibition “Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room.” A variegated exploration of the sublime.
Friedman Benda
515 West 26th Street – New York
www.friedmanbenda.com
