Verso is a furniture and design gallery that industry expert Amauri Agiar and architect Bryan Young founded in the summer of 2022 in Tribeca, New York, with the stated aim of creating an ideal location for site-specific installations, presenting new possibilities and a new way of making direct sales.
The Wrong Shop is an online platform that sells limited edition prints, posters and objects by artists and designers from all over the world. It was set up in 2011 by Sebastian Wrong, himself a designer, to enable independent and multidisciplinary makers to interrogate and extend the boundaries of their practices “making unique, eclectic artwork and objects accessible to a contemporary audience”, according to the website. He took part in Milan Design Week this year with a pop-up store in the Brera Design District hosted in the space of George Sowden, a British designer who lives and works in Italy.
Up until 12 August Verso will be hosting an exhibition showcasing some of The Wrong Shop’s most extraordinarily striking works.
The core of the most important pieces consists of five creations by Freeling Waters, a collaboration between Gijs Frieling, a painter turned muralist, and Job Wouters, a graphic designer turned calligrapher: a collection of vintage cabinets reworked in bright colours that supports recycling while at the same time celebrating exceptional craftsmanship. The work to salvage these unique objects, transforming their appearance, merges past and present in an eclectic revival.
Also on show in the gallery are new panels by Erwan Bouroullec, a designer as well as artist and subverter of technology. Following the launch of The Impossible, limited edition works on paper from 2022, Bouroullec has reinvented his artworks in the form of panels on an aluminium support. A multifaceted series that explores how we experience and understand our surrounding environment.
The exhibition also includes contemporary posters by British artist Richard Woods. Known for his unmistakable style of creating installations and sculptures that frequently offer an innovative twist on the aesthetics of traditional architecture and interior design, Woods first gained recognition in the 1990s and his work can be considered part painting, part engraving and part sculpture.
To complete this journey between art and design (including expressions that can belong indifferently to one category or the other), a selection of works made for The Wrong Shop by Ronan Bouroullec, Pierre Charpin, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Jaime Hayon, Rop van Mierlo, George Sowden, Bethan Laura Wood, Job Wouters and Phillippe Weisbecker.
Exhibition photos © Michel Zylberberg
