Art or Design? Why Not Both?

Art or Design? Why Not Both?

Courtesy Demisch Danant

Demisch Danant gallery was selling Pierre Guariche's 1962 lounge chair "La Vallée Blanche" for €85,000.

Photo by Rieko Tamura

New York’s Yoshii Gallery was selling Taizo Kuroda's vases for $4,000 to $7,000.

Maria Pergay Pierre Paulin Tadao Ando Joep van Lieshout Jean Francois Prouveur Foster + Partners to Design Abu Dhabi Museum Mixed Results for Phillips 20-21st Century Design Sale Issues with Reissues

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New collectors, shockingly young designers, cutting-edge materials, and remarkable cultural crossovers defined the unique energy at the third edition of the fair, where the limited editions and unique design pieces exhibited underneath the spectacular concrete dome of the Markthalle — most of which sold out — were as tempting as the provocative art featured a couple of blocks away in Art Basel. For its second year in the Modernist landmark dome, the fair increased the number of exhibitors from 22 to 28, drawing an eclectic mix of 21 returning galleries and seven newcomers: Carpenters Workshop Gallery, London; Galerie Eric Philippe and Perimeter Editions, Paris; Galerie Dewindt and Galerie Pierre Marie Giraud, Brussels; Vivid Gallery, Rotterdam; and Yoshii Gallery, New York.

“The quality of the fair is very good, and people are aware of that,” said Suzanne Demisch from New York’s Demisch Danant gallery, whose partner Stéphane was doing business with a gentleman dazzled by the “rarrissime” Pierre Guariche 1962 lounge chair La Vallée Blanche (€85,000). She said that art collectors are growing increasingly interested in design: “We can feel the progress every year.”

The fair has also expanded its Designers of the Future Award — a prize created in 2006 to promote young creatives who push the boundaries of art and architecture and change the way we understand design — to encompass four winners: London-based Martino Gamper, Max Lamb, and Julia Lohmann, and Munich- and Sweden-based duo Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram. All have developed new and unique approaches and processes within a relatively short span of time, creating design objects that are eloquently beautiful and poetic. “By including more than one winner, the Designers of the Future Award provides a more complete picture of where design practice is heading,” said the Design Miami/Basel organizational team, still led by the charismatic Ambra Medda and Craig Robins, in a statement.    

But the biggest draw at the fair was Amsterdam’s Atelier van Lieshout, whose "Slave City Project” was already on everyone’s lips before Joep van Lieshout’s talk on “Radical Art, Architecture and Design” with critic Aaron Betsky Tuesday evening. AVL’s Boardroom Table and Crockery for Slave City, with 14 chairs and complete set of vessels, was all set up at London gallery Albion’s booth and selling for a surprisingly reasonable $40,000.

The radical designer, who called himself “a romantic-surrealistic artist, not a conceptual artist” at the talk, was seemingly omnipresent at the fair. Another dealer highlighting AVL was super-active French dandy Loïc Le Gaillard, who gushed about the Bad Sofa, a sensuous yet masculine dark velvet sofa available at his booth that would make any lucky sitter look sexy, and who had already sold three of an edition of 10 of the designer’s Family Lamps, each priced at €36,000, the last to Brad Pitt.

“Ultra-contemporary design by super-young designers is something collectors are seeking today,” said Le Gaillard, who emphasizes design’s affordability, especially in comparison to the blue-chip works selling across town at Art Basel. “The pleasure of acquiring a rare, edgy piece at an extremely reasonable price, and knowing it’s a long-term investment, is a positive equation.”

Another steal, he said, is Jeroen Verhoeven’s Cinderella table, made of soft, translucent Carrare marble and priced at £150,000 in an edition of 6; “Art would never sell this low.”

While dealers mostly agreed on that point, they differed on the collectors’ provenance. According to Nicolas Chwat from Perimeter, limited-edition works by contemporary designers predominantly drew a younger set of European collectors. “All of the buyers at Design Miami/Basel this year are surprisingly new,” he said.

In order to attract and keep their attention, Chwat presented works that contradict with as much as they compliment one another, in “intense and interesting” dialogues, he said. Pierre Paulin’s seamless Dos à Dos sofa riffed off of Gonçalo Mabunda’s unique African Man Throne, an armchair composed of deactivated welded weapons, for example, while Paulin’s geometrical Cathedral table spoke to a spiky surrealistic chandelier by British James Lethbridge. Early sales at the booth included several of Janette Laverrière’s mirrors at prices ranging from €15,000 and €20,000 and her Nenuphar table for €20,000.