The Salon of Art + Design returned for its third edition in New York, and its second at the ornate Park Avenue Armory. Though the surroundings were lovely, the wares on view were even more impressive. ARTINFO rounded up five of our favorite booths at the fair, which runs through November 17.
Francois Laffanour
Laffanour, among the world’s most experienced dealers of Charlotte Perriand furniture, brought especially rare pieces by the Corbusier associate and also by Jean Prouve. Among the most interesting objects in his booth are three pieces circa 1959 from a private house in Paris, for which a friend asked Perriand to design custom Japanese-inspired furniture. One of her hallmark bookcases and an overhead light were among the pinewood objects for that particular commission, which visitors to the fair eagerly ogled on Thursday night. He also brought a custom-made Jean Prouve conference table made for a corporate office and a painting by Takis, a Greek artist who, explained Laffanour, sought to make “invisible forces” like electricity tangible in three-dimensional form.
R & Company
The Tribeca gallery migrated uptown with pieces by both established and emerging designers, historic and contemporary. One section of the booth featured ceramics by the Hass Brothers, pulled from the duo’s current show at R & Company. Made with glazes that change colors under modulated light, the vases stood alongside couches and armchairs from Oscar Niemeyer and Sergio Rodrigues. At the other side of the booth were the gallery’s most attention-drawing pieces: a table and ceiling lamp by Los Angeles-based designer David Wiseman. Hand crafted from bronze, the objects’ smooth curves (no joints in sight!) drew sighs of desire from onlookers. “It’s like the Four Seasons of machinery!” observed one besotted visitor.
Carpenters Workshop Gallery
The London- and Paris-based gallery showed pieces by French artist and designer Ingrid Donat. Previously represented by Barry Friedman, who was lounging nearby on a curved couch at his own Friedman Benda booth, Donat is now in the hands of her son, one of Carpenters Workshop’s co-founders. His plans for promoting her formidable oeuvre go far beyond the fair — the gallery will release a monograph about her work next year. In the meantime, they showed silver-tone wax cast pieces, the most impressive being a low, rectangular table with circular motifs.
Cristina Grajales Gallery
SoHo-based Grajales showed her trademark array of North and Latin American designers last night, but though the selection is familiar, many of the objects were anything but. The most pleasant surprise at her booth was work by Mexico City designer Gloria Cortina, who made her North American debut at the fair with geometric side tables in bronze and obsidian. There was also a Samurai Cabinet
by Sebastian Errazuriz, one of Grajales’s most popular designers.
Salon 94
Errazuriz was also represented at the nearby Salon 94 booth with his “Antiquity” sculpture — an especially fitting piece for the fair because the designer insists that the Classical-style statue is actually a functional object, more so than an art piece. The sculpture is swathed in architectural-style scaffolding, with horizontal bars that serve as bookshelves. Elsewhere in the booth, a veinless white marble chair by Rick Owens and travertine bowls by Kueng Caputo impressed visitors with their unorthodox interpretations of stone.
