British artist/designer Richard Woods has applied mock Tudor façade to a shopping mall in Seoul, fake flagstones to a cottage in Finland, and now brings a collection of woodblock tabletops to Friedman Benda Project Space in Chelsea. Presented as both tables and wall-mounted works, the exhibition’s vibrant color and patterns celebrate the places where we eat, work and commune. (Through Aug 19th).
Major Leipzig school artist Rosa Loy’s painting ‘Comfort’ loudly signals spring with giant snowdrops and rebirth with the strange orb emerging from a central figure who may have just risen from a hole in the ground. (At Friedman Benda Gallery through March 28th).
Rosa Loy, Trost, casein on canvas, 63 x 82.75 inches, 2009.
Friedman Benda’s summer group exhibition, featuring contemporary Japanese art seen through a post-Fukushima Daiichi lens includes traditional architecture upended and mirrored by Takahiro Iwasaki and a mind-bending interactive installation by Kazuki Umezawa for which looking into an iPad at a digital print produces surprising results. (In Chelsea through August 8th).
Foreground: Takahiro Iwasaki, Reflection Models, wood, monofilament, 2014. Background: Kazuki Umezawa, AR image core involving all, digital print on tarpaulin sheet, 2 iPads, 2013.
Examples from Dutch designer Joris Laarman’s ‘Maker’ series, on display at Chelsea’s Friedman Benda Gallery, demonstrate the possibilities this celebrated young designer explores using digital fabrication. Here, resin and walnut undergo an attractive merger. (Through June 14th).
Joris Laarman, Maker Chair (Diagonal), resin and walnut, 31.5 x 23.62 x 25.59 inches, 2014.
