Prototypes and Experiments

30 May - 30 August 2008

The Aram Gallery is initiating a series of displays made up of prototypes and experiments sourced from designers’ studios. The displays will form a long-term and ever-changing exhibition, with a new piece brought into the gallery each time another is sold or returned to its owner.

It includes work by a.b.a.k.e., Jorre van Ast, Sebastian Bergne, Jurgen Bey, Martino Gamper, Thomas Gardner, El Ultimo Grito, Gitta Gschwendtner, Ineke Hans, Matthew Hilton, Michael Marriott, Ben Panayi, Tomek Rygalik and Floris Schoonderbeek.

Prototypes and experiments are critical elements in the development process of any new design.

The prototype is the manifestation of the design idea on its way to production; experiments are more like steps on the way. The prototype, being part of a process, makes more real an idea that will lead to a final piece, and is not made with the intention of being sold or shown outside the designers’ studio. Experiments are also unique artefacts but are even less refined and sometimes constitute a partial sketch on the way to the prototype.

These objects however, can hold a rare charm; there’s an increased closeness to the designer’s imagination, and a directness to the making that often changes when manufacturing and marketing forces are fully integrated. The objects might be characterised by a technical or material discrepancy, compared to the final product, due to a lack of access of the designer to technology at the process stage. It’s a stark contrast to the current wave of limited editions - which has made for the unique to be diluted by multiples and for the production piece to be restrained in order to increase the value of singular pieces.

The Aram Gallery is interested in the way designers think and work. We have chosen to present these unique artefacts as part of our ongoing search for insight into the design process. The new programme will start with fourteen pieces sourced from the studios of established and less known designers.

Prototypes and Experiments will include selected drawings alongside the pieces taken from the designers’ physical or digital sketchbooks.

Curator: Daniel Charny
Assistant Curator: Alison Norris

This project has been supported by:

All pieces are for sale - prices on request.

For more information please contact:

daniel@thearamgallery.org

Prototypes and Experiments

From 21 May 2008

The Aram Gallery is initiating a series of displays made up of prototypes and experiments sourced from designers’ studios. The displays will form a long-term and ever-changing exhibition, with a new piece brought into the gallery each time another is sold or returned to its owner.

Prototypes and experiments are critical elements in the development process of any new design.

The prototype is the manifestation of the design idea on its way to production; experiments are more like steps on the way. The prototype, being part of a process, makes more real an idea that will lead to a final piece, and is not made with the intention of being sold or shown outside the designers’ studio. Experiments are also unique artefacts but are even less refined and sometimes constitute a partial sketch on the way to the prototype.

These objects however, can hold a rare charm; there’s an increased closeness to the designer’s imagination, and a directness to the making that often changes when manufacturing and marketing forces are fully integrated. The objects might be characterised by a technical or material discrepancy, compared to the final product, due to a lack of access of the designer to technology at the process stage. It’s a stark contrast to the current wave of limited editions - which has made for the unique to be diluted by multiples and for the production piece to be restrained in order to increase the value of singular pieces.

The Aram gallery is interested in the way designers think and work. We have chosen to present these unique artefacts as part of our ongoing search for insight into the design process. The new programme will start with fourteen pieces sourced from the studios of established and less known designers. It includes work by a.b.a.k.e., Jorre van Ast, Sebastian Bergne, Jurgen Bey, Martino Gamper, Thomas Gardner, El Ultimo Grito, Gitta Gschwendtner, Ineke Hans, Mathew Hilton, Michael Marriot, Ben Panayi and Floris Schoonderbeek.

Prototypes and Experiments will include selected drawings alongside the pieces taken from the designers’ physical or digital sketchbooks.

Curator: Daniel Charny
Assistant Curator: Alison Norris

This project has been supported by Arco

Total Trattoria
New pieces by Martino Gamper

7 March - 26 April 2008

Trattoria: a food event where people come together to share a meal and each others company.

London based Italian designer Martino Gamper, along with Maki Suzuki, Alex Rich and Kajsa Stahl, have taken the trattoria concept and shaped it into a series of events where they ‘curate’ both the environment and the meal. By exposing the preparation of a meal, a game of anticipation develops in which design offers itself not only as a support but also as a talking piece. Different elements were designed and made specifically for each Trattoria and venue.

The Total Trattoria will not only include the design of the dinner table, but also tableware and decorations, lighting, seating, the cooking preparation area and storage shelves – anything that Gamper qualifies as an element of the environment. This also includes the food – a menu of which will be published on the Aram Gallery website.

In the world of the Total Trattoria all the parts of the puzzle will be designed and made.

7 March - 26 April 2008

The Aram Gallery has commissioned London-based designer Martino Gamper to create Total Trattoria - the ultimate expression of his Trattoria al Cappello concept.

Developing further his idea, Total Trattoria, which opened on 7 March 2008, completes the concept and puts it on show to the public for the first time.

Gamper has designed every single element of the dining event ranging from the kitchen and its storage areas to the cutlery and the tables and chairs to the glassware. A series of thirteen individual tables that connect to form one large dining table snakes around the gallery to seat 25 guests. The 25 chairs around the table are all different but are constructed from the same set of component parts, designed by Gamper.

The pieces include the results of many collaborations between Gamper and a wide variety of makers including engraved glasses placed on clusters of leather coasters, blown-glass water jugs and limited edition placemats designed by Gamper’s collaborators in the Trattoria events, Maki Suzuki, Alex Rich and Kajsa Stahl.

The exhibition graphics and communication, also designed by Suzuki, Rich and Stahl, includes a specially designed catalogue.’

Gamper, who recently received a Wallpaper* Design Award for the ‘Best Alchemist’, has just sold 100 chairs (from the project ‘100 chairs in 100 days’) to a Milanese gallery, and the Total Trattoria is an opportunity to see his new work in an unusual format.

www.gampermartino.com

Curator: Daniel Charny
Assistant Curator: Alison Norris
Graphic Design: Abake & Alex Rich
Gallery Director: Zeev Aram

Fresh Produce
Daniel Charny

A dining chair, a table and a fruit bowl are all known entities, but when they are on Martino Gamper’s chopping board they are transformed. While they become a fresh variation of their type they also take on a physical manifestation of his interest in a big idea: in which the whole becomes an unexpected result of the combination of its parts.

The Aram Gallery is pleased to present Martino Gamper in a solo show of new work, our first fully commissioned exhibition. The Total Trattoria has been developed to showcase the versatile and collaborative nature of Gamper’s work.

The Trattoria is an occasional series of dining and design events that a group including Gamper and Abake have run 22 times over 8 years. In all 22 previous Trattorias the main purpose of the event has been the bringing together of people to a dining experience supported by design. In each event some of the furniture, ad-hoc kitchen set-ups or serving accessories were specially designed, and it has been as much about the furniture being rustled up as the food.

In the Total Trattoria, for the first time all elements are custom designed. This is a celebration of the specially made. It has served as a springboard for generating and creating new pieces of design.

Gamper’s design process works with ingredients in a way that is reminiscent of cooking methods. He treats types of objects like traditional dishes, ones that have a solid principle but by challenging the established combination of ingredients, new recipes emerge and the results evolve.

This resourceful, experimental attitude has been consistently at the heart of Gamper’s work. The first piece I encountered, in 1998, was a credit card sized flat laminate widget, cut into a very specific shape. He called it a Sky Hook or sometimes a Taste Enhancer. It did neither of these mysterious functions in any obvious way – but it was a first signal of a search to embody social ideas through design. The next such combination was a ‘Corner Party’. During his studies Gamper camped out at various friends’ flats and found himself often contemplating the nature of corners. Organised in one the Milan furniture fairs, every element of the party from the corner street location to the furniture, the plates and the food was a version of a corner made from a different material.

Total Trattoria follows shortly after the success of 100 chairs in 100 days, another ambitious project, the 100 chairs in 100 days, in which parts of discarded and collected chairs found themselves adapted and mixed into a flurry of new chairs. The resourceful and charming combinations, made with a light touch are fast becoming Gamper’s signature.

Total Trattoria is an extension of this way of producing new pieces through a rich mix of planning and making. The exhibition includes a study of 25 variations on an idea for a new dining chair made of the same pieces but not necessarily combined in the same way, alongside many different objects that are variations on recognised themes. The thing that ties them together is that they are all expressions of the social nature of the dining event, each of the designs demonstrates the conviction that a social idea can be embodied in designed objects.

Don’t Panic

Interview with Joseph Wade, one of the three Founding Directors of Don’t Panic, by Daniel Charny - Gallery Curator.

Walking Chair

Interview with Karl Emilio Pircher and Fidel Peugeot, founders of Walking-Chair, by Daniel Charny - Gallery Curator and Anna Colin - Assistant Curator.