Nigel Coates

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‘I go for architecture that overlays and enhances. By blending observation and wit with reason, I want my work to generate a sense of the unexpected, and the seemingly spontaneous.’ - Nigel Coates







Nigel Coates at Pavilion of Art and Design London:
October 12th - 16th


"Nigel Coates has designed and built interiors, exhibitions and buildings around the world. His buildings in Japan include the Wall, Noa’s Ark and the Art Silo, and in Britain, the National Centre for Popular Music, Powerhouse::uk and the Geffrye Museum. Throughout his career as a practitioner, he has pursued experimental work that has been shown in an art and design context, including such exhibits as ArkAlbion shown at the Architectural Association in 1984, Ecstacity at the same venue, and Mixtacity at Tate Modern in 2007."

"This year, Cristina Grajales Gallery will be featuring Nigel Coates' Domo Collection, produced in collaboration with famed Italian company Poltronova. This collection of furniture highlights Nigel's continued interest in the mixing of materials, the interaction of the human body with design, and the elaboration of traditional design elements into a contemporary context. The Domo collection is distinguished by its elegant and curving lines emphasized by the capriole leg. Here, Nigel reinterprets this design element, transforming this collection into contemporary sculpture." text taken from here...

Cristina Grajales, Inc 10 Greene Street, 4th Floor New York, NY 10013

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“Today, I see my work as detached from the expressionism of the drawing.
This idea grew out of my experience in industrial design which is directed at the broadest possible public. My aim is to achieve an economy in the result which can’t even be defined as minimalist: a commonplace.”

- Martin Szekely















This text taken from Six Constructions: An imagined dialogue... here... It's an essay on design and art and definitely worth considering when taking this voyage... Today, I'm sticking with monuments, but these monuments are smaller, and are side tables, as opposed to the cemetery I posted yesterday in Italy. Oh the simple delights of the cube, or the vertical rectangle. It makes no difference to me, they are shimmering, dense, gorgeous forms, that quietly will pull at your pant leg, as you drink a hot cup of tea.

Welcome to the weekend, warriors.




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"Design is cannibalistic. It feeds off itself.

In the wide field of visual culture, no single discipline (high or low, traditional or new, functional or purely aesthetic) has retained a sense of autonomy. Visual artists have cannibalized design to such an extent that the very notion of use-value can no longer be used to distinguish an “artistic” project from a “design” project. The post-utopian community and the furniture objects of Atelier Van Lieshout, Jorge Pardo’s house which is also his artistic opus in Los Angeles, and the functioning “Donald Judd bar” built by Tobias Reyberger fo the Munster Skulptur Projekte are all striking. Examples of visual artists blurring the boundaries of the desire of visual art to not only cannibalize its own history but also neighboring disciplines. Just like design.
Is it reactionary or visionary to think about the specificity of a discipline, to ask questions about the status of visual art and object production today? Is it possible to reconsider the fundamental issues that have been eclipsed by this process of blurring of disciplinary boundaries?"

please read full essay here....

Martin Szekely, images:

1. Fake side tables, round and square,2007 aluminium, ebony Galerie kreo limited édition
2. Side tables Sam and AA, 2005 honeycomb, corian, brass or cork

via Galerie Kreo....















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rooms must resonate.


"res·o·nate"
1. Produce or be filled with a deep, full, reverberating sound.
2. Evoke or suggest images, memories, and emotions.











































rooms must resonate.



"res·o·nate"
1. Produce or be filled with a deep, full, reverberating sound.
2. Evoke or suggest images, memories, and emotions.


1. via sotheby's auction.
2. barber and osgerby. more info here....
3. thomas sandell for marsotta, console table.

Portrait of a coffee table....
pt. 1.
"a study for the minimal moon lounge."

Portrait of a coffee table....
pt. 1.
"a study for the minimal moon lounge."



1. via environment, leblon coffee table. Reclaimed Peroba wood. . "Its wood is also one of the most durable, 34% harder than oak and slightly harder than black locust. It has a fine texture, a faint warm rosy brown hue, and when it is weathered and aged, it grows in character and texture, almost resembling petrified stone."

2. Onyx Italian 70's via current Rago Auction. Onyx is a cryptocrystalline form of quartz. The colors of its bands range from white to almost every color (save some shades, such as purple or blue).

3.. Burl wood coffee table by Milo Baughman. Burls yield a very peculiar and highly figured wood, one prized for its beauty by many; its rarity also adds to its expense. It is sought after by people such as furniture makers, artists, and wood sculptors.

4. Marble. Two part Triangular coffee table from Talisman London. 1970's.







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"It seems silly to
superimpose words on work."
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images:

1. John McCracken, electric, in bronze, via David Zwirner
2. Willy Rizzo 1970's coffee table, via here





John McCracken in an interview writes: "It seems silly to superimpose words on work. It seems natural to me that these things are applied to the work as that's what I try to put in it. I've always been interested in metaphysics-so I guess one also does a self portrait of one's body of ideas. My own work has puzzled me-especially as it relates to the plank. I kept coming back to making planks and I kept wondering if I was being habitual or obsessive or responding to demand, or if there was more to this plank form than I consciously realized. I wondered if they were a life form from somewhere that was channeling through me and it didn't make any difference if I understood them or not.


It worried me a bit-I believe in being intuitive but not being unconscious. I started to realize that these were figurative things that are both in the world and out of it. Because it leans at an angle, when you put a plank in a room, it kind of screws things up-it can be a little disturbing, but I found I liked that. When you set things vertically they go with everything but when you set them at an angle then you have something that shifts away from our reality. It's partly in the world and partly out of the world. It's like a visit. "




more of the interview here..









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