![]() For Wines, plop artworks are museum sculptures scaled-up and “plopped” outside as they outgrow the confines of the lobby gallery. In his 1970 essay “Public Art-Private Art,” American architect James Wines coined the term “plop art” to describe the abstract Modernist public sculptures often found in front of corporate buildings (think Mark di Suvero’s I-beam installs). ![]() The hallmark of corporate monumentality is the scalelessness of the project - no transaction is too big or too small. OMA’s CCTV building in Beijing, a monument to China’s rise in wealth and influence in the late 90s and early 2000s, looks like a blocky version of a Henry Moore sculpture, suggesting a correlation between abstract art and the abstraction of capital. At the same time, the bench refers to an old European tradition of “trophy furniture” dating back to 19th-century Germany and Austria, when noblemen and women would decorate their case goods, chairs, and chandeliers with the externalized bones of their conquests.-Camille OkhioĬCTV Headquarters 1:100 Scale Model, OMA, 2004 (left) and iPhone, Jony Ive for Apple, 2007 (right).ĬCTV HEADQUARTERS 1:100 SCALE MODEL, OMA, 2004 Distinguished by its addition of an antler to Judd-like boxy plywood, the horned settee is an elevated manifestation of the period’s hipster design, obsessed with taxidermy and drunk on the romance of the hunt. According to B&B Italia, its manufacturer, the sofa is simply a “design statement.” The content of that statement? Does it matter? - Carson ChanĮven before goth fashion king Rick Owens presented his first furniture collection in 2007, prototypes decorating his Paris townhouse were featured in the first-ever issue of PIN–UP, among them his Stag bench. Hadid’s curvaceous Moon System sofa operates along similar visual lines. Did Guangzhou need an opera house? Not really, but behold the way Zaha Hadid made the main hall’s balconies appear like waves rippling across the pearlescent, cavernous ceiling. This logic extends programmatically as well. “Why” is less important than the sheer joy of formal determinism. The ability to sculpt 3D models into sinuous, bulging shapes has seduced a faction of the architectural elite to imagine beyond the perceived strictures of rectilinear space. MOON SYSTEM SOFA, ZAHA HADID FOR B&B ITALIA, 2007īorn from the newly developed digital-animation techniques of the mid-1990s, the promise of Parametricism is the largesse of form. Moon System sofa, Zaha Hadid for B&B Italia, 2007 (left) and Stag bench, Rick Owens, 2006 (right). In that sense, Chair_ONE is representative of the cynicism-free techno-euphoric atmosphere of the era, a time when technological and digital innovation were met with excitement rather than exhaustion. The aluminum lattice was structured like an unfolded soccer ball, but in the context of the early 2000s also manifested the trending wireframe aesthetic of 3D-rendering programs (digital renderings, simulations, and testing - still novelties at the time - all played into the design process). The design is a perfect example of Grcic’s early work, which combines an affinity for sculptural forms with tough materials and an everyday nonchalance. In the early to mid-aughts, no architectural rendering was complete without Konstantin Grcic’s Chair_ONE standing in as a signifier for contemporary aesthetics. Felix BurrichterĬHAIR_ONE, KONSTANTIN GRCIC FOR MAGIS, 2003 Sculptural work like the Robber Baron series, released only a year before the global financial crash, also paralleled the rise of the burgeoning collectible-design market. ![]() The pop-cultural and historic references are still there, but they’re executed by highly skilled artisans in Studio Job’s ateliers, using only the most precious woods, metals, and stones, and making ample use of gold. Studio Job’s work from the early to late 2000s represents both a continuation of this style and its complete antithesis. ![]() Design companies like Droog, and designers like Marcel Wanders, Jurgen Bey, Hella Jongerius, Wieki Somers, and later Maarten Baas, propagated a style that was cheeky, lurid, and pragmatic all at once, using simple, utilitarian materials and punning references to create furniture of maximum effect. The late 1990s and early 2000s were dominated by Dutch design, finding support from key retailers like Murray Moss. Robber Baron, Studio Job, 2007 (left) and Chair_One, Konstantin Grcic for Magis, 2003 (right). Reviewing this complex era, curators Felix Burrichter and Camille Okhio have created a virtual exhibition, selecting 30 objects that sketch out a broad outline of the past 20 years, through the lens of PIN–UP. The first two decades of the 21st century coursed with contradictions and concerns, bookended by the fever dream of the Y2K scare and the reality of the COVID-19 global pandemic. ![]()
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