Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/32301
Rafael de Cárdenas, left, in the OHWOW bookstore he designed in New York; above, a piece from his debut furniture collection. Reformer New York-based designer Rafael de Cárdenas must be racking up the frequent flyer miles. This spring saw the opening of his ex- hibition design for “New York Minute” at Dasha Zhukova’s Garage Center in Moscow, and the superhip men’s boutique Unknown Union in Cape Town. Add to that the new SoHo restaurant, Niko, and a slew of private residential projects in New York and London for the art and fashion set. We caught up with the peri- patetic Cárdenas on the occasion of his latest project (at press time, that is), his first furniture collection, now available at Johnson Trading Gallery.—Tali Jaffe How long have you been working on this initial collection? About two months. I support short design processes, meaning take one idea and charette it until you have multiples on a theme, then make it quickly. Were any of the pieces derived from work you’ve already done? It largely came from designs for various clients over the last year that we spliced to create a series of new hybrids. Why did you choose to launch with Johnson Trading? It came out of a dialogue with Paul [Johnson]. We immediately hit it off when we met, having very similar interests in design. We like the culture of production. RECESS! If children’s fantasies are primordially derived, then perhaps it’s perfectly fitting that for his first large- scale outdoor installation, Nacho Carbonell is creat- ing a playground for Milan’s Galleria Rossana Orlandi. Taking over Design Miami/Basel’s outdoor space, the Eindhoven-based, Spanish designer— whose surreal, tactile forms often conjure speci- mens that escaped from some alien natural history museum—is calling his installation “Playground Closes at Dusk.” And while details were still being confirmed at press time, “the leitmotif of this col- lection is the waking up of the senses,” says Car- bonell, who has been known to employ materials spanning bronze, epoxy resin and latex to papier- mache, gravel and powdered leaves. “Interacting with the art pieces is not just a mere answer to our curiosity instinct, but also an invitation to prove our senses, to feel our body reactions and investigate our approach with our surroundings.”—AC James Zemaitis, 20th Century Design, Sotheby’s A study for Nacho Carbonell’s “Playground Closes at Dusk” scuplture installation. “At the moment, pre-war design, from the Tiffany lamp market, to the blue-chip works of French Art Deco by Ruhlmann, Rateau, Dunand and others, to the master- works by the European-American pi- oneers of Modernism from Rietveld to Frankl, is the stronger market. It has come full circle since the time I first began directing sales in 2001 when the “old masters” of the 20th century seemed stale, and there was an insatiable thirst for the masters of mid-century de- sign. It seemed like each season records were set for Noguchi and Nakashima, Prouvé and Perriand, Mollino and Esherick… I have no doubt that we could achieve prices close to, or perhaps surpassing, the market high of 2006-07. But it’s a matter of supply and demand, and right now, it’s the earlier works that have momentum.” SHOP TALK CULTURED 31 PHOTO BY TIM BARBER