Paris-based designer Raphael Navot’s furniture, now on view at Friedman Benda Gallery, begs to be touched. The gallery explains that the soft, curving forms of this couch, titled ‘Entwined,’ demonstrate the concept of comfort as something experienced both mentally and physically. Though velvet upholstery resembles the surface of rock, and Navot intends to harken back to what the gallery calls the first furniture, ‘a pile of rounded rocks,’ the sheer tactility of the sofa’s sweeping curves makes softness irrelevant. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 10th).
