Installing: the exhibition of Jacques Jarrige opens tonight

Yesterday evening installing the exhibition of new works by Jacques Jarrige with the precious help of Mathieu Loisel and Claire Le Douaron also documenting. Jacques is in Paris but with us  through Skype. 

Join us for the opening reception tonight May 15, 6 - 8 PM at Valerie Goodman Gallery

315 East 91st Street, 4th floor, NY NY 10128

Jacques Jarrige + collaborative work of Jarrige, Mathieu Loisel and the patients of l’Hopital des Murets outside Paris. Photos and videos by Claire Le Douaron

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John Chamberlain Choices at the Guggenheim

Highly recommended. Seems hard to just look; 90% of visitors were taking Iphone pictures. Here is a selection

Opening of Jacques Jarrige Exhibition

The opening was a great event to honor the work of Jacques Jarrige mixing other artists and friends.

The feedback so far is good: the work really stands out at a time when people crave for the handmade tactile and spiritual feel.

I visited on Friday the Kips Bay Show house, a yearly event to support the Boys and Girls Club

and I was once again struck with the amazing energy and talent displayed as a number of interior designers take on a room or area of an Upper East Side multi floor townhouse and turn them into jewels. Incredible attention to details in the floor, wall, design is omnipresent. I especially enjoyed the work of the design firm 2Michaels which I thought relayed very much to the work of Jacques Jarrige.

Read this blog post for detailed information about their exhibit

I also liked a lot the work of Nancy Boszhardt who took over a landing and transformed it into a simple, elegant, soulful and beautiful seating room

More on Nancy’s work

Another favorite was the dressing rooms by Darren Henault

The floors and wall covering were remarkable:

It is easy to feel isolated when working from a loft gallery where street traffic is limited so it felt inspiring to go to this event and connect with these brilliant decorators.

Preparing the Jacques Jarrige Exhibition

I am expecting the shipment carrying the Jarrige furniture I will present in my gallery starting October 27. I have already hung 2 Fiori chandeliers and sconces  . Next week we will install on the gallery walls the giant poster of Jacques’ atelier in Paris against which the pieces will be displayed. The idea came to me because Jacques cannot travel and I wanted his presence at the show. For the same reason we will also play a video of him working because this is an artist who actually makes his own pieces as he likes to say he is an artist-artisan.  

 It was hard to make a selection of his works because every time I saw a new piece I wanted to have it. I want people in the US to discover his work so I had to select a large enough sample of his pieces. The work is addictive, spirited and I am not the only one thinking that.  I have met a few French collectors of his pieces who have been living with them for a number of years and feel uplifted every time they look at them or use them as if they had a soul and every time they have a chance, they add to their Jarrige collection. Since his Barbarian days www.barbares.com Jacques has kept a fresh approach to building furniture that are also sculptures

Last week I met 2 French people who live in New York and have brought with them from Paris chairs, tables, lamps and other pieces of Jarrige, they enthusiastically showed them to me and offered to lend them for the exhibition.

The dining table is made of MDF and lacquered  http://www.1stdibs.com/furniture_item_detail.php?id=452727

The coffee table http://www.1stdibs.com/furniture_item_detail.php?id=452742  has a biomorphic feel to it

The bronze table lamp http://www.1stdibs.com/furniture_item_detail.php?id=452748  with the handmade shade is pure fantasy

The Armchair  http://www.1stdibs.com/furniture_item_detail.php?id=450551 is Barbarian.

Other works for Jacques in Parisian apartments

Join us for the opening reception on October 27 at 6pm.

Marc Newson at the 92 Y

Two blocks away from my gallery is the 92^nd street Y and Thursday night was the 1^st of theirDialogues with Design Legends series curated by Daniella Ohad Smith.

I was eager to go and listen to Marc Newson interviewed by Alice Rawsthorn of the International Herald Tribune because he has made such a mark in so many industries from a piece of luggage for Samsonite, to spaceships for EADS, cars, furniture, jewelry  to name a few.   Marc Newson  just opened his new exhibition “Transport” at the Gagosian Gallery.

It was interesting to learn about his approach to design, his way of thinking about his work. He grew up in Australia interested in making things and started his education with sculpture and jewelry design because they were the only classes that were practical and not just theoretical.   His first creation that launched his career was the Lockheed lounge in 1986 made out of small pieces of aluminum soldered like an old aircraft hence the name. It looks great but the soldering is not intentional, he just did the piece with the technical knowledge he had at the time and through this project he learned how to do the next one.  What drives him is that each piece he makes helps to expand his knowledge and solve a problem.  By 1992 when he designed his Event horizon table his range with aluminum had expanded tremendously.

He is not a collector, doesn’t have emotional attachment to his work but on the other hand it is important to him that his pieces are collected, kept for a lifetime by their owners because he has managed to create something beautiful, groundbreaking, well made etc.

He wants to be recognized as a groundbreaking design talent and he welcomes challenges of very large corporations coming to him to solve a problem they, with all their means and talents haven’t been able to figure out. He worked 6 years on a project for Qantas, he designed a car concept for Ford, a spaceship for space tourism, aircrafts and many other objects. He is the choice of any luxury brand looking to make a statement in their industry from Boucheron jewelry to Riva boats,  Ikepod watches etc.  When he speaks about his projects you feel his excitement, he points to a number of  aspects that went into the concept and  production of the piece.  He sees each of his opportunities to  design  as  a dream come true, he starts from what he hates about existing products in the industry and thinks of how to make it great, from the form to every detail of its production.

Artist or designer? He doesn’t consider himself one or the other, he hates boundaries and if a gallery like Kreo or Gagosian offer him the possibility of creating a concept or a very limited edition he is happy being an artist on the other hand if a corporation sells thousands of his products he is happy being a designer.  The objects take a life of their own; what’s important is to keep producing new concepts and one approach helps the other.

His body of work is enormous and his pieces sell for several million dollars at auction. What I find incredible is that he can make something beautiful for anyone.  I love his Fractal Necklace for Boucheron inspired by the Julia set, a fractal whose formula was created by the French mathematician Gaston Julia (1893-1978), it is breathtaking piece with its 2,000 stones which took the craftspeople 1,500 hours to complete

Daniel Mack’s New Work

I really enjoyed seeing Daniel Mack’s new work at the outside in gallery in Piermont NY. Daniel Mack  has been working with drift wood found in the Hudson for 30 years. He is famous for his chairs made out of oars and other found pieces that are in a number of museum’s permanent collections. 
Recently to balance his architecture works which are long term projects and jobs  that don’t satisfy his need for artistic freedom he started sculpting smaller pieces of wood into human shapes and making imaginary tools.  He told me that he started this new body of work for 2 reasons:  Larger pieces of wood became harder to find in the Hudson and most importantly his wife turned 55 which is the age, he explains, when women come into their own creativity.  Social pressure is no longer ruling their lives and their deeper creative personality comes out, mixing masculine and feminine attributes; multiple inner “heads” develop and coexist. The tools are made from driftwood, feathers and other material.  He says that in time, the purposes of these tools will reveal themselves and keeps them in tool pouch.
Mack works with children and terminally ill patients and they participate in the making of some of these pieces as collages and ensemble of tools which are found useful in relieving some psychological needs.
The pieces are spirited and vibrant alone or as a group. He complains that the art world sees the evolution of his work as a dichotomy and is not supportive of it as if he should continue making furniture the rest of his life. I think his work, old and new is meaningful and  worth collecting.
Read more about his work, writing and teaching and visit his studio in Warwick, NY http://www.danielmack.com/

Interview with Thomas Gallery

At 315 East 91^st Street on the 6^th Floor you will find Thomas Gallery www.tomthomasgallery.com  who recently relocated from East 59^th Street.  I interviewed its founder Tom Thomas Gargiulo

VG: You started as a collector …

TT:  Yes of pieces of contemporary arts and furniture prototypes

VG: Such as…

TT: Andre Serrano (http://andresserrano.org/),  David Wojnarowicz http://www.ppowgallery.com/

Title: Something from Sleep II  1987-88 mixed media on canvas 36” x 36” and

 Sally Mann http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Model_Family.html

That was in the 80’s and I  liked people who were where challenging social structure:  Mann with nudes  photos of children, Wojnarowicz who challenged the capitalist nature of the healthcare system in the face of the 80’s crisis and Serrano who  explored the themes related to sexuality and religion with body fluids etc.

VG: And in terms of furniture…

TT: In the 80’s I got interested in the work of Memphis (http://designmuseum.org/design/memphis )and one of the artist I collected was Massimo iosa Ghini http://www.iosaghini.it/progettiByYear.asp?nav=worksNavItem&?tipo=byYear&year=1989

 who was working with parabolic forms in furniture.

I also loved primitivism and collected unknown twig pieces such as a desk and unusual corky things.

VG I think you also collected early pieces of French designers Garouste & Bonnetti…

 Yes in the 80’s from the New Barbarian collection from the gallery

En attendant les Barbares www.barbares.com/, and also from France pieces by Andre Dubreuil.

VG: How did you find the pieces from France?

TT: originally through auctions when there was not a market for them yet and therefore prices were very low.

VG: Once you opened the gallery did you keep collecting?

TT: yes I fell in love with the work of Andre Arbus http://www.architonic.com/dcobj/search/arbus/2/1, Gilbert Poillerat (http://www.architonic.com/dcobj/gilbert-poillerat/8102878/2/1), Jacques Adnet http://www.architonic.com/dcobj/search/adnet/2/1 and initially bought the pieces to furnish my apartment.

VG:How did you become a dealer?

TT: I really discovered my passion for fine and decorative arts and I wanted it to become my business, my main activity so I decided to leave my profession.

I studied both art history and decorative arts history and eventually gave lectures and taught classes at Parson’s school of design focusing on French 40’s decorative arts.

Decorative history continues to fascinate me because it is important to understand the thinking of a time period and how people relay to objects.

VG: Thomas Gallery has an incredible inventory where you find pieces designed by important artists as well as great pieces by unknown artists…

TT: Yes  great pieces can be made by unknown artists and they too can reflect the spirit of the time just as much as the ones by someone who was known and working in Paris.

VG Among all your pieces I selected these: 

 Tell me about this table

TT: I thought it was a very classic piece, I was attracted by the hand hammered quality of the piece which imbued the work of the 40’s because it was the last time in France when furniture was completely hand made in a widespread fashion.  The marble from Levanta  is of exceptional quality.

VG: what about this sculpture from Togo?

TT: A fascinating anthropomorphic sculpture, simple and expressive at the same time

VG: I love this crystal ceiling fixture, how did you find it?

TT: One of the things I love about France is that you can find beautiful things in any region. I started visiting the South of France more than a decade ago and have made a number of contacts.

I liked the simplicity of this piece, not fussy, just right and crystal is always interesting in how it reflects light

VG: And this Rene Prou cocktail table?

TT: The curves are very sexy, simple but the way the iron slowly tapers and also curves is very sensuous and at the same time simple, very elegantly done

VG: You’ve also collected Swedish pieces what can you say about this stunning Hjort Chandelier?

TT: It is among the most stunning and daring pieces that I own. The way the spikes emanate from the stem and the fact that it has 2 light sources and the glass is different: a ball and an oval globe each sandblasted and decorated. An entirely imaginative work.