Ferrari Rocking Chairs, Giant Claes Oldenburg Sculptures in Midtown, and More Design Finds

Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photos: Stephen Kent Johnson, Steven Probert, Matthew Gordon Studio, Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Enrico Marone Cinzano, TK

In November, the design world continues to ramp up to December and Design Miami with new shows, from Salon of Art + Design at the Park Avenue Armory, to openings at Friedman Benda, Superhouse, and Salon 94, among many others. There’s a new homewares and grocery café courtesy of Flynn McGarry, owner of Lower East Side wine bar Gem Wine, and in midtown at Lever House, we’ll get some monumental Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen pieces, including some of the jumbo-size Pop Art sculptures that made them modern art royalty.

Openings: Gem Home

Photo: Sean Davidson/seandavidson

Photo: Sean Davidson/seandavidson

After running out of space at his Lower East Side bar and restaurant, Gem and Gem Wine, Flynn McGarry had to find a more permanent place to indulge his love of design. Inspired by the West Coast grocer-cafés he grew up with, he opened Gem Home at 181 Mott Street. Inside, the shelves are lined with designer linens, Ffern fragrances, antiques, and exclusive collaborations, including a collection of sculpted soap dispensers by the New York ceramist Shane Gabier (though I can’t promise these aren’t already sold out). The interior and custom woodwork (both by McGarry) keeps things pared back. There’s also plenty to eat at the family-style tables made by McGarry from a daily rotating menu of prepared foods, along with pastries, flowers, and homemade preserves that are for sale. Open Wednesday to Sunday 9–6 p.m.

Public Art Watch: Pop Art Legends at Lever House

Architect’s Handkerchief, 1999, by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. From “Oldenburg and van Bruggen on the Roof,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which ran from May 1 to November 3, 2002. Photo: Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource

Plantoir, Red (Mid-Scale), by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Painted cast aluminum and stainless steel, and polyurethane foam. Art: © Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; Photo: Oriol Tarridas

Midtown’s newly restored Lever House will get a lively addition of public art with an exhibition of modern Pop Art legends Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Some of the husband and wife duo’s most iconic sculptures will be displayed inside and outside of the modernist building. Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s ode to Mies van der Rohe’s signature pocket square, the 12-foot fiberglass Architect’s Handkerchief, will blow toward Park Avenue, and inside, a giant cloth saw will hug the walls and floor. The couple made over 25 monumental homages to consumer products like soap and toothpaste together — making Lever House, a former headquarters for the soap manufacturers we now know as Unilever, a fitting backdrop. After a yearlong display of Ellsworth Kelly’s art, this is the second public exhibition at the renovated office building. Opens on November 18.

Archival Deep Dive: Superhouse’s “Colorama”

From left: Tom Loeser and Wendy Maruyama. Photo: Jim EscalantePhoto: Jennifer Siegwart

From top: Tom Loeser and Wendy Maruyama. Photo: Jim EscalantePhoto: Jennifer Siegwart

Superhouse’s two-person show “Colorama,” continues the downtown gallery’s studious approach to American craft, spotlighting instrumental and lesser-known figures of art furniture. Since the ’80s, Tom Loeser and Wendy Maruyama, pioneering figures of the postwar American Studio Craft movement, have created furniture that challenges the conventions of woodworking and uses color with both precision and a sense of irreverence. Maruyama’s wall-mounted cabinets are paneled in psychedelic colors but are restrained and precise in detail. Loeser’s “Switchback,” a wooden two-seater bench, has an A-frame-like structure that allows the seat to function backward and forward. Metal straps bound the rounded felt body of his But But But chair, which has three circles painted in different colors and sizes on its seat, suggesting allocated seating. They last exhibited as a pair in San Francisco in 1984. Opens on November 14.

From left: But But But and Switchback, by Tom Loeser. Behind: RX and WITH SALT OR WITHOUT, by Wendy Maruyama. Photo: Matthew Gordon Studio

From left: Chairiot, by Tom Loeser. Behind: NIK NAK, by Wendy Maruyama. Photo: Matthew Gordon Studio

New Gallery: Matthew Fisher

From left: Photo: Stephen Kent JohnsonPhoto: Stephen Kent Johnson

From top: Photo: Stephen Kent JohnsonPhoto: Stephen Kent Johnson

Growing up with a geologist father, the designer Matthew Fisher is well acquainted with stone, and it appears to be a central medium in his range of furniture and objects. This month, the designer will present his 120-piece collection at his new gallery in a somewhat unusual location, downtown’s Seaport neighborhood. Marble vessels, tabletop slabs, consoles, and most intriguingly, lampshades are presented in a gallery styled like a house, with help from Michael Reynolds, an editor at AD and Wallpaper*. Fisher’s stone pieces are installed throughout the rooms and the courtyard, showing the medium’s possibilities at every scale, from a 600-pound stone planter that looks like a chalice to a light of silver links that dangles to the floor like a bracelet. There’s even a range of more portable objects, most of which are made from offcuts, like a modestly sized blue-marble and bronze incense holder. Opens on November 14 at 106 South Street.

Machine-Nature Mashups at Friedman Benda

Basculante, by Enrico Marone Cinzano. Photo: Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Enrico Marone Cinzano/Daniele Roccabianca

Rosa Tank Lamp, by Enrico Marone Cinzano. Photo: Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Enrico Marone Cinzano/Daniele Roccabianca

At “Obsessed by Nature,” a Ferrari car seat is perched on a bed of exposed rods and bolts and functions as a battery-operated rocking chair. A tower of pink, powder-coated steel is planted in a hefty stone, a floor lamp that looks salvaged from a factory floor. The rest of the pieces by Enrico Marone Cinzano at Friedman Benda are similarly unsettling. Using only found or discarded materials, the Italian artist recombines them into works that question what is trash and what is functional, and knit-together industrial fragments with raw materials like marble, wood, and stone. Cinzano, previously a financier and property developer, has not had the typical artist’s trajectory (and his family lineage is also more glamorous than most — his great-grandfather was a founder of Fiat Automobiles and his family runs the Cinzano wine company). He has prioritized sustainability in previous business ventures, from a fashion brand to a home-product line. With his furniture design, it’s not just about recycling, the artist says, but a question of maximizing beauty and function in the materials of our daily lives. Opens on November 14.