For the gallery’s annual presentation at PAD London Art + Design, Friedman Benda will premiere works by contemporary designers Byung Hoon Choi, Paul Cocksedge and Joris Laarman.
London-based designer Paul Cocksedge conceived of Poised when examining the elegance and amenability of paper. Half a ton in weight, the steel table appears improbable upon investigation. Created following an intensive series of calculations regarding gravity, mass, and equilibrium, the table looks as though it is about to fall, but is perfectly weighted and stable
This exhibition will debut new works from Dutch designer Joris Laarman’s Maker series. Laarman’s Maker series was inspired by a simple thought: what if he could design a chair or a table that anyone could fabricate, using current digital tools? Aware of the scale limitations of commercially available 3D printers and computer-guided cutters, he created a chair built from many individual small parts. Each piece is slightly different in shape, all engineered to fit together exactly like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.
In addition, this exhibition will feature Joris Laarman’s Vortex Console, which was inspired by the research on computational vortex methods by Mark J. Stock of the University of Michigan. With this method, vortexes showing seemingly chaotic behavior, visualized in beautiful sheets, can be controlled. The production of the Vortex Console was engineered in such a way that it would allow us to create a new variation every time. Multiple layers of perforated aluminum contours are assembled following a digital blueprint.
A lounge chair by Korean Byung Hoon Choi, afterimage from the beginning of the world 9421, completes the setting. Shadows and vague references are abundant but do not define this work; the biomorphic forms dialogue with 20th century sculptors as Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Isamu Noguchi and the celebration of material echoes the international modernism of Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, to whom Choi feels an affinity.
