Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2023 i Wallpaper

DAVID ELLIOTT Writer A curator and writer, Elliott first met our guest editor Yayoi Kusama (page 263) in Tokyo in the 1980s, while researching an exhibition on Japan’s avant-garde for the Museum of Modern Art Oxford, where he was director. ‘From the beginning, I was overwhelmed by her intensity, energy and generosity,’ says Elliott, who later became the founding director of Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum, in which the artist’s Kusamatrix took over an entire floor. ROSA BERTOLI Design & Italy editor ‘Working with guest editor Giulio Cappellini [page 237] has been a fascinating experience,’ says Bertoli, Wallpaper’s design editor since 2014. ‘He was full of insight and captivating stories, my favourite being the launch of Shiro Kuramata’s furniture, when Cappellini and the late Rodolfo Dordoni spent the summer drawing ideas…

A new take on Alvar Aalto’s iconic 1933 ‘Stool 60’ is the latest chapter in the creative conversation between Milanese studio Formafantasma and the stool’s manufacturer Artek. The collaboration, which began as a research project into timber extraction back in 2020, is rooted in sustainable objectives. Finnish furniture giant Artek’s refinement of its designs has included the elimination of natural marks from the wood for market conformity, but Formafantasma chose to challenge this convention. The studio’s version of the stool is instead made entirely of wild birch, with its chromatic fluctuations, knots and insect trails remaining visible instead of being edited out. ‘The new wood selection celebrates the quality of imperfection, in which natural marks are proudly shown, making every product unique,’ says Artek’s managing director Marianne Goebl. And not…

With a shared emphasis on engineering, elegance and precision, watches and cars have always made excellent bedfellows, a fact that hadn’t escaped Tag Heuer and Porsche, who cemented their unofficial partnership in 2021 with the launch of a new watch nodding to the motorsports background of both brands. Together, they are now marking 60 years of both the Tag Heuer Carrera collection and the Porsche 911 (originally known as the 901) with the new Tag Heuer Carrera Chronosprint x Porsche. Available in either gold or steel, the pieces are equipped with a brand new movement directly inspired by the Porsche 911 engine. ‘The good thing about the Tag Heuer Carrera is that it has some very strong design codes,’ says Tag Heuer heritage director Nicholas Biebuyck of Jack Heuer’s creation,…

When describing his architecture, Byoung Cho often talks about nature. But his connection to it is not achieved through specific physical means such as materials of a certain provenance, low-tech construction methods or even particularly arcadian rural sites. At the core of Cho’s practice is ‘interdependent nature’, a flexible, context-specific take on architecture, centred on the idea of an equilibrium. He cites the Dalai Lama, who first talked about this concept in The Path to Tranquility (1998): ‘We need a clear awareness of the interdependent nature of nations, of humans and animals, and of humans, animals and the world. I feel that many problems, especially man-made problems, are due to a lack of knowledge about this interdependent nature.’ Cho broadly defines this as the way ‘nature, people and every living…

Since the beginning of his career, Mathieu Lehanneur has been the definition of multidisciplinary. He’s created interactive street furniture for the city of Paris, conceived speculative electric cars for Renault, designed marble tables for Carpenters Workshop Gallery, and led the design team at Huawei. Lehanneur is the sort of designer that can easily meld his sensibility to any brief, dreaming up ideas for wildly disparate sectors like it’s his second nature. One of his most recent commissions came from the world of sport, when the International Olympic Committee chose his torch design for the Paris 2024 Games. However, with the unveiling of his latest endeavour, a gleaming new HQ in Paris’ Ivrysur-Seine neighbourhood, Lehanneur plans to narrow his focus and build up his practice as an independent brand in its…

To observe the multi-dimensional works of Ken Gun Min is to almost enter another realm. The South Korean-born, LA-based artist illusively combines painting, embroidery and illustration in much of his work, which features complex compositions of fantasy-like imagery that draw from both Eastern and Western worlds. Vibrant and colourful, with symbolic details that entice the eye, Min’s canvases embody a confluence of global cultures that echo the unending barrage of images, emotions and ideas prevalent in society today. Combining historical East Asian motifs and decorative treatments, alongside references to Western pop iconography and mythology, each painting exudes a kaleidoscopic beauty and intensity that enables the artist to address themes of race, gender, sexuality and otherness in a delicate and intimate way. The mix of concealed and ouvert representations bestows his…

In summer 2004, with the release of Mira Nair’s adaptation of William Thackeray’s classic novel Vanity Fair only weeks away, Aditya Assarat visited Mirabai, Nair’s production company, where he had the rare chance to look over her shoulder as she edited. What does Nair look for from the actors, Assarat asked as the film began to take shape before his eyes. ‘Energy,’ she said. ‘The actors have to have energy from the start of the scene to the end.’ Assarat’s next close look at Nair in action came in spring 2005 when The Namesake went into production. While Nair was in the process of launching the project, based on Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, Hollywood had offered her a seven-figure sum to direct the fifth Harry Potter film. One evening in New…

Thirty years separate celebrated author Tahar Ben Jelloun from his protégé Edem Awumey, a young writer from Togo who, at the time of mentoring, had just published his first novel, Port-Mélo. But a strong rapport grew between them, based largely on their experiences of exile. At the beginning, they discovered each other cautiously, They read each other’s books, just to get an idea. Then they listened carefully to one another, circling around each other to see where they could push the envelope, one in voicing criticism and the other in accepting it. Awumey began to send Ben Jelloun the first pages of what he was working on, a typed outline of a work in progress, then Ben Jelloun would send him his comments. Edem was in Gatineau, in the province…

Year after year, Anish Kapoor, one of the world’s most famous living artists, astonishes the international arts community with his gigantic, enigmatic creations that fill the biggest exhibition spaces in the world’s best-known galleries. Nicholas Hlobo, a young artist from Johannesburg whose output is closely watched by collectors longing to buy, weaves together rubber, leather and fabric to produce intimate objets and performances that evoke an enticing but provocative beauty. Although there are few points of connection between the two artistic approaches, the ‘poetic dialogue’ of their mentorship period proved fruitful and inspiring. Anish Kapoor’s south London studio encompasses an entire block, and Nicholas Hlobo confessed he felt overwhelmed when he first went there. Later, Hlobo came to regard it as a wonderland, likening his visits there to voyages of…

A shared interest in history, technology and religion created an immediate rapport between Margaret Atwood and Naomi Alderman. Their mentoring period proved intellectually exciting as their conversation, both in person and online, ranged from observations on the existential dread that zombies represent in the Western psyche to the validity of popular culture as an art form. Fully engaged in writing for the digital world, they even co-wrote a zombie novella, for Canadian digital publishing platform Wattpad, which Atwood suggested they do after learning about Zombies, Run!, the mobile app Alderman had co-created. Both authors embrace culture in the broadest sense of the word. There’s no high and no low. Any form can be done badly or well – with craft and art, or not. Alderman credits Atwood – prodigiously curious…

For their mentoring period, many architects choose to work on a building that can be realised and displayed. David Chipperfield and his Swiss protégé Simon Kretz opted for something more cerebral, with the potential for far-ranging impact. It is what you might call slow architecture. They chose to work theoretically, but with a real piece of city, to examine design proposals and planning processes for this chunk of landscape. Their location of choice was the site once occupied by the Bishopsgate Goodsyard, the former East London railway yards that had festered in a neighbourhood otherwise transformed into an investment asset. To some extent, their project was a comparison between planning in the UK and Switzerland. Comparing the two systems meant Kretz could be treated as an equal, despite their vastly…

Of all the disciplines in the Rolex mentorship programme, the literature partnership is the most elusive. Writers write alone; you can’t watch them making a work of art or a film or a building. But the bond that developed between Colm Tóibín and Colin Barrett grew into ‘a literary friendship’. ‘We’ve been able to talk in a way that you just can’t even with your loved ones,’ says Tóibín. ‘You can’t start talking to them about the way you use the pluperfect tense in a novel. So, to have another writer around, for whom these are also pressing matters, was great. I could talk to him in a way that I couldn’t talk to someone else.’ When the mentorship began, Barrett had completed a prize-winning book of short stories, Young…

One of five pairings for the latest edition of the Rolex Arts Initiative, French architect Anne Lacaton, of Paris-based practice Lacaton & Vassal, has selected as her protégée Lebanese-Armenian architect, designer and researcher Arine Aprahamian, and the two will spend the next two years in creative collaboration. Lacaton set up Lacaton & Vassal in 1987 with Jean-Philippe Vassal, and the studio has since become internationally recognised for designs that maximise architecture’s human and environmental potential and make sustainable use of what already exists. The pair’s first built project created together, in Niger, was a straw hut, constructed using locally sourced bush branches and, on returning to France, they completed a slew of critically acclaimed projects, such as Maison Latapie in Floirac, designed to be economical, sustainable and flexible, Maison Cap…

Six years in the making, the highly anticipated One Sloane hotel has quietly opened its doors in the heart of London’s Chelsea, hidden within a handsome 19th-century brick mansion on a leafy residential street just off Sloane Square. A team effort between legendary Paris hotelier Jean-Louis Costes, Cadogan Estates and French designer François-Joseph Graf, the property is an elegant fusion of British heritage and charm with a dash of Parisian flair. The building itself, designed in 1889 by architect Edwin Thomas Hall, has undergone a major overhaul. Working in collaboration with the best British artisans and French craftsmen, Graf embellished the building’s original details, such as ceiling cornices, wood panelling, stained glass windows and trompe l’oeil, with restored antique furnishings and a rich layering of sumptuous textiles and fabrics. This…

In traditional wedding anniversary terms, 15 years calls for crystal, so when Gallery Fumi founders Sam Pratt and Valerio Capo called upon Libby Sellers to take the reins of their celebratory new show, ‘Growth + Form’, she gave them a fitting gift. ‘It seemed appropriate on the 15th anniversary to offer them crystal,’ says Sellers, a long-term collaborator who had also curated the tenth anniversary exhibition. ‘I started with this basic idea of crystal, but far from any literal interpretation or representation, I decided to celebrate its qualities as a material in flux, its growth and form, from small particles into a structure of geometric beauty.’ The inspiration for the theme comes from Scottish biologist D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s 1917 treatise On Growth and Form, a mathematical study of living forms,…

When Italian designer Antonio Citterio conceived the now-iconic ‘Max’ sofa for Flexform back in 1983, it was the first time he had incorporated organic forms into a more traditional structure. ‘Until the end of the 1970s, I had always followed two schools of thought: the American way of the Eameses, and the rationalist one of Giuseppe Terragni,’ he explains. ‘I worked with designs that were symmetrical and perpendicular. With the ‘Max’, I confronted the idea of being asymmetrical, with a ‘freer’ form. At the same time, it still feels like my work in terms of memories of the rationalist school of thought.’ The sofa’s sculptural design is defined by a kidney bean-shaped seating platform resting on a tubular frame, with an off-centre cylindrical backrest. It acquired legendary status after Flexform…

Crowning 20 years of its far-reaching Mentors & Protégés programme – in which leaders in a multitude of disciplines are partnered with aspiring creatives for a year-long exercise in shared learning – the Rolex Arts Festival, held in May, was not only the first to be livestreamed by the brand but leaves its own temporary imprint on its host city of Athens. Besides luring numerous high-profile mentors, including William Kentridge, Joan Jonas, David Chipperfield and Robert Wilson, to the Greek capital, Rolex supplemented the four-day festival of talks, panel discussions and performances with a week-long programme of 12 public talks and events that accessed nine partner venues across Athens. Each had been designed in collaboration with leaders in the local arts community to highlight the continuing artistic legacy of many…

Saburo Teshigawara’s singular form of dance theatre strikes many viewers as deeply mysterious. To initiate Junaid Jemal Sendi into his perplexities, Teshigawara began by assigning him the role of witness to the creation of a new piece, Kazahana, for a dozen professional dancers of awesome proficiency. According to Teshigawara’s programme notes, the title denotes the phenomenon of snow fluttering to earth from a clear blue sky. Although Teshigawara has directed a troupe of his own in his time, he prefers to travel lighter now. The Kazahana dancers were drawn from a loose network (some freelancers, some members of stable companies) who share his desire to expand the horizons of their discipline. Sendi was immediately integrated into that network, taking part in classes and improvisations. Sendi was often struck by the…

Brian Eno, who became famous in the 1970s as part of glam rock band Roxy Music, has never stopped finding new ways to be creative, using all the media that today’s fast-developing technology can provide. He and his protégé Ben Frost, a young Australian musician living in Iceland, spent time in each other’s studios in London and Reykjavik, but their prolonged discussions went far beyond music. At the heart of their interaction was a shared determination to create the art of the future. Says Frost, ‘The whole process was sometimes just like a long conversation that wasn’t even about music – a cup of coffee, an occasional word of advice, a visual contribution to a project based around the film Sólaris. He made it clear, though, that he wanted to…

Olafur Eliasson’s mentoring came at a critical moment for Sammy Baloji. He had completed the series of collages that had established him as an artist. He was dividing his time between his home town of Lubumbashi, in Congo, and Belgium, where in 2010 he had taken a residency at Tervuren’s Royal Museum for Central Africa. He now had a partner in Brussels, drawing him closer to his adopted country. But what next? The answer was to make a move from photography to new media to create the Belgian Pavilion for the Venice Biennale, his first installation. At the beginning of the mentorship, Eliasson made it clear he wanted a non-hierarchical relationship; he was seeking an exchange. ‘I was not there to tell him what to do, but to help him…

In the first few months of her mentorship, Pauchi Sasaki rushed to keep up with Philip Glass, who, though entering his ninth decade, was not slowing down as a composer and performer. Sasaki first travelled from Peru to Japan to see Maki Namekawa perform Glass’ Piano Etudes, and then to Amsterdam to observe the Philip Glass Ensemble perform his score for the 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi at a live screening. But it was in New York City, where Glass has been a fixture in the East Village for decades, that the mentorship flourished. ‘It was often talking or drinking tea or him making a sandwich,’ says Sasaki, ‘when some story would come up’, allowing her to learn about what it means to be a composer from one of the most influential…

Kyle Bell is a Native American filmmaker from the Thlopthlocco Creek community who grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His documentary films about his people have a powerful eloquence. They seem in stark contrast to the fast-talking, urban-based work of his mentor Spike Lee, director of classic films such as She’s Gotta Have It, Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X, yet through the mentorship, the two filmmakers discovered a lot in common. ‘I wanted to work with a Native American filmmaker,’ says Lee. ‘The original people in this country who have practically been silenced, forgotten, treated horribly in American cinema. And when I met Kyle, I liked his story and his heart.’ Bell appreciated the empathy. ‘He was curious to know about where I come from, and how similar we…

One of five pairings for the latest edition of the Rolex Arts Initiative, American jazz vocalist Dianne Reeves has selected as her protégée South Korean modern jazz singer and composer Song Yi Jeon, and the two will spend the next two years in creative collaboration. Internationally recognised for her breathtaking virtuosity, improvisational prowess and unique jazz and R&B stylings, five-time Grammy winner Dianne Reeves is considered the pre-eminent jazz vocalist in the world. Her most recent album, Beautiful Life, received the Grammy for best jazz vocal performance, and she won the same award previously for three consecutive recordings. She was the first creative chair for jazz for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the first singer to ever perform at the famed Walt Disney Concert Hall, and a featured soloist with Simon…

Jasper Morrison How did you meet Giulio Cappellini? In 1987, some of my work was exhibited at Zeev Aram’s shop in Covent Garden. I think Giulio saw the ‘Thinking Man’s Chair’ there, or in a 1988 article in Domus magazine, and then came to visit my studio. What did you most enjoy about working with him? I think we understand each other very well. Whenever we meet, there’s an atmosphere of possibility, and a shared aim to make something new. Thirty-five years later, it’s the same – we sit down and talk about new projects with the same enthusiasm. How has your collaboration with Cappellini helped shape your career? Early on, it made a huge difference to be working in Italy with Cappellini. Giulio was building the company into something…

Sauna culture is as old as the hills, but its popularity never seems to lose steam, as Wallpaper* contributing editor Emma O’Kelly charts in her new publication, Sauna: The Power of Deep Heat. Exploring the history, rituals and mythology behind this much-loved pursuit, the book visits more than 50 saunas, spanning 11 countries (from the obvious Scandinavian ones to the likes of Ireland, Japan and the Netherlands), with highlights including the barrel-shaped floating raft at Ödevata in Sweden and the remote mini timber tower at Eldmølla in Norway. The book also examines various process mechanisms, from making the perfect steam to using infrared technology. ‘Scientists say regular sauna use helps lower blood pressure, reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease and dementia, and boosts immunity,’ says O’Kelly. ‘The thermoregulatory ping-pong that…

In the panorama of Italy’s leading furniture brand, Edra is a fascinating anomaly: the company is based in Tuscany, far from the madding crowd of Brianza. Its Milanese showroom is not a street-facing window into its products, but is set within the spectacular Palazzo Durini, which, until its opening in March 2021, had never been accessible to the public. And although it follows the traditional design calendar and shows at Salone del Mobile, its presentations eschew a traditional domestic scenario, favouring instead scenographic displays showing its furniture in a unique mix of technology, craftsmanship and creativity. The company’s story began in the late 1980s as siblings Monica and Valerio Mazzei started Edra (a name that references the Greek and Roman exedra, a room with benches for meeting and conversation) to…

From Madrid to Makati, a modest amber glass bottle with a vanilla-toned label, filled with a woody, aromatic elixir, has become an emblem of good taste. At the heart of Australian skincare company Aesop is an exacting design ethos that gives form to something that is, in its essence, ethereal. When Marianne Lardilleux, director of global retail design, joined the company in 2016 as store design manager for the Americas, she had spent six years working for luxury behemoth LVMH. Aesop helped reactivate her focus on a more sustainable, conscious way of doing things. ‘I had a lot of Aesopian things in my home already, but I realised that it is mostly about an attitude; how you welcome people, adding lemon to a jug of water, or sourcing local flowers,’…

Were Omer Arbel’s latest house a film, the rather sci-fi scenario might go something like this: architect finds archaeological remains in farmer’s field and builds contemporary structure around them. Inspired by his studies in Rome, where ancient ruins live amid modern buildings, the Vancouver-based artist and designer presents his first house in a decade as a piece of ‘found architecture’. Carrying over a theme from the adjacent 23.2 house (his designs are numbered in order of creation), which showcased reclaimed, century-old Douglas Fir beams, Arbel sections off bits of this house (75.9) with rectangular glazing, both revealing their materiality and situating them as quasi-archaeological displays. Located on a large acreage in a rural area south of Vancouver, 75.9 is 9,000 sq ft of living space locked in a mutual embrace…

Eaubonne, an unassuming suburb north of Paris, is not where you’d expect to find a brutalist bunker by the late architect Claude Parent, rising up like a shark fin in a sea of stucco houses. But Eaubonne also happens to be the home of artist Loris Gréaud, who thrives on the unexpected. Gréaud has garnered a reputation for artworks that mess with viewers’ perceptions, flickering between reality and illusion. He created an underground sculpture park that nobody can see, destroyed a museum exhibit on the night of its opening, and shot a two-hour film for one viewer to watch at a time. As a teenager, he was entranced by the drawings of Parent, a utopian thinker who, in the 1960s, co-developed an architectural theory called ‘la fonction oblique’, using sloped…

For logistical reasons, it was understood from the outset that Robert Wilson and his protégé, Federico León, would meet chiefly on Wilson’s turf. For most of the time, therefore, it was Wilson’s philosophies and Wilson’s work-in-progress that provided the principal substance for their dialogue. León entered into this asymmetrical arrangement with eyes wide open. Though his prior exposure to Wilson productions had been limited, León had seen enough to recognise how seamlessly Wilson integrates a panoply of different artistic languages within a single scene, and he got his first good look at his mentor in action at the Watermill Center, a bucolic retreat on Long Island, New York, founded by Wilson in 1992 and created ‘as an international facility for new work in the arts, conceived to foster communication and…

Conceptual artist John Baldessari, the nearest thing to a revered master in a cultural sphere that disdains hierarchy, and inventive young artist Alejandro Cesarco successfully negotiated the cerebral landmines of their artistic domain, forging a rich, playful and productive relationship. Cesarco appealed to Baldessari as still in a formative stage. ‘With Alejandro, I sensed somebody that had a lot of interests I felt sympathetic with,’ he says. In the beginning, the heart of their relationship was, quite simply, talk. Later, they started to trawl the galleries around Baldessari’s home in Santa Monica, California. ‘We would just try things,’ says Baldessari. ‘I have a garbage-can mentality. I don’t dismiss any kind of art out of hand. Good art can appear anywhere – art that makes me completely change my idea about…

At the age of 19, Masanori Handa journeyed from Japan to India and underwent experiences so powerful and overwhelming that he became an artist. ‘I had the sensation of being in my own skin among many people,’ he remembers, trying to explain how the immensity of India awakened his desire to turn his most personal thoughts and feelings into art. ‘But later I felt this [sensation] was disappearing, and the mentoring period with Rebecca reminded me of where I began. That’s what is important.’ Horn’s own approach to art proves that everything is possible. Moving with ease from body-extension sculpture to drawing, film, poetry and photography, she encouraged Handa to explore even the most unlikely possibilities in his work. ‘I suggested that it would be good for him to explore…

Kazuyo Sejima’s buildings radiate a poetic sensibility, but the Japanese architect is deeply pragmatic about what it takes to ensure that a building serves its purpose. Instead of asking her protégé Yang Zhao to observe from the sidelines, she decided she could best support her protégé by guiding him through the design and construction of a building. ‘If we can make something together, it is better than just thinking or talking,’ she reasoned. Following Japan’s devastating tsunami in 2011, Sejima and a group of like-minded architects began designing buildings on a pro bono basis, in several, heavily damaged towns. Known as the Home-for-All shelter programme, each project offered local residents, especially those relegated to temporary housing, a much-needed place to gather and get away from their tight living quarters. While…

At the heart of Peter Zumthor’s approach to architecture is the imaginative re-expression of personal memories and emotions – sounds, smells, light, darkness, texture – the touch of an old door handle, the smells and shadows of his grandmother’s kitchen. ‘My philosophy is to do as little as possible, not to make a lot of architectural noise.’ Mere weeks into her role as Zumthor’s protégée, Gloria Cabral found herself travelling to South Korea to look at a project site near Seoul, the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary of Namyang, where Zumthor had been invited to design a tea chapel. They then returned to Haldenstein, Zumthor’s Swiss base, to start the design process. Cabral duly found herself immersed in a process very different to her own practice. ‘I sort…

‘If I had to find one word to sum up that period, it would be ‘transformation’,’ says Khoudia Touré, talking about her mentorship with Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite. ‘I can now express more within my dance, have more tools, have fewer blocks. I also learned to be more confident.’ Pite’s own career was helped along the way by the likes of William Forsythe, who understood that the woman dancing in his Ballett Frankfurt was interested in more than performance. In her own career, she mentors more by example than teaching. ‘I didn’t want to tell Khoudia how to do anything,’ she says. ‘She was already doing it and knew a lot. It was more sharing with her how I would approach a particular problem. It was about cheering her on.’…

One of five pairings for the latest edition of the Rolex Arts Initiative, acclaimed Ghanaian artist El Anatsui selected as his protégée the South African artist Bronwyn Katz, who lives and works between Cape Town and Johannesburg, and the two will spend the next two years in creative collaboration. Anatsui’s monumental sculptures and installations move across painting, textiles, sculpture and design to encompass the use of water, wind, wood, clay, stone, metal, printing plates and other found materials, but of all his mediums, it’s the use of liquor bottle caps (a reminder that alcohol was an item of barter in colonial trade across Africa) that made him a global art star. Anatsui had been exhibiting consistently since 1969, and in Europe and the US since the mid-1990s. But he became…

Watch behind-the-scenes footage of Giulio Cappellini’s interiors shoot To see a behind-the-scenes video and photographs of our New Horizons shoot at Milan’s Superstudio, visit Wallpaper.com…