A month and a half ago I was pointed out the work of Morgane Tschiember she’s French, not sure from where, but from what I gather from her Bio of expo’s she went to school in Quimper, France. Quimper is known for it’s typical painted ceramics. Morgane’s work is not related to this, but always find this an interesting town. 

The pieces by Morgane above are called Iron Maiden and were shown at Galerie Loevenbruck, Paris in 2007. These huge coloured sheets are sheets of metal, perfectly coloured that are seemingly peeling off the wall. It seems such a simple piece or collection of pieces, but yet I have never seen anything quite like this before. They’re like perfectly peeling walls, revealing the next colour of the wall beneath. However when you think of the sheets of peeling sheets of metal it puts the whole piece in a new dimension, makes you want to touch and feel if you really cannot bend it and tug it like a piece of paper. Being a big fan of colour it makes me a very very happy person. 

Below I have also collected some photos of Morgane’s Pop Up Collection from 2008 also presented in Galerie Loevenbruck.

The work of Thorsten Brinkmann was featured in the latest issue of Damn Magazine I believe. Thorsten was born in Stuttgart Germany. He is represented by Kunstagenten based in Berlin. I wasn’t familiar with his work until this week, and especially enjoy these “old master” style portraits with metal and fabric and containers wrapped around the portrayed people’s heads. The top photo is my favourite one and called: “Drune Quoll” from 2007. The other detail I am intrigued by the fact that the models never have arms, even if the arms would have to be on the photo they have been tucked away in the next piece of clothing.

This is a quote from Damn Magazine about Thorsten’s work:

“In the mercantile port of Hamburg, Thorsten Brinkmann tangles with a modern-day caveman’s dreams. Unable to resist the allure of dumped urban detritus, this German artist recomposes and intervenes in the trash to scrap cycle to come up with installations, videos or photos such as portraits and still lifes. Why wouldn’t you wrap your head in sheet metal?”

Usually as you might have noticed I do not post our studio’s work on this blog, but you must have noticed it has been quiet on Plus & Minus Things. So I have decided to share some of what we’ve been working on. Our studio has been working on hard on many projects, including new collections and curating and designing a design show during the International Contemporary Furniture Fair here in New York. Please see below some images of our new collections.

TAPED TABLE LINEN

 AVAILABLE VIA byAMT DESIGN

Table linen with a pattern drawn using tape, with the raffled tape ends still showing, The tape is mimicking the old school way of patterning a woven damask. They used to use paper with squares to clearly indicate the pattern of the piece that needed to be woven. The tape is playing off of this underlying pattern, especially noticeable in the Tea Towels. However the Tape pattern does something else, it indicates a spot, an area where we can eat, it tells us that that is a place where something happens, just like lines on the street tell us to park, or not park somewhere. Museums have lines/tape on the floor indicating to not pass that boundary. This is the underlying story. Taped is the first set in a series, more will be developed over time. 

A repeated pattern which will be cut into Dish Towels, each batch will create a new series of Dish Towels, as the print is moved over slightly. For ICFF these towels will be presented in a bright colour, not only the current grey + white.

Taped will include: 
1x Linen Damask Table Cloth
6x  Napkins with 6 different designs
Dish Towels

It is being launched at ICFF on 2 locations by a new company Functionals.eu, which manufactures all products in house and sells all their products exclusively via their own website: www.Functionals.eu. The first products in their collection are a lamp by Dick van Hoff and a set of candelabras by Roderick Vos.

To see these pieces, please come and visit us at this exhibit from May 16 – June 14th:

400 Years Later -CITE Goes Dutch  
CITE Showroom
131 Greene Street (between Prince and W Houston St.)
New York, NY 10012, US

JOINTED JEWELLERY

 AVAILABLE VIA byAMT DESIGN

Jointed Jewellery is a work in progress – which will debut at ICFF and continue to evolve for another exhibit planned in September 2009 (more info about this soon)

byAMT will present a collection of Jewellery with ball joints and in the near future other objects with this same joint. By using modern technology it is possible nowadays to make shapes that are impossible to make using old  techniques. It is impossible to mould a ball joint in ceramics or plastics all in one go, without assembly needed. A ball joint can only  be put together after the parts have been manufactured separately. Using Selective Laser Sintering, a 3D printing technology, it is possible to create a ball joint connection in one piece. Next to creating jewellery, we will explore the idea of making every day objects with ball joints (including a stool, a lamp, etc) 

Some questions we posed ourselves and thoughts that went through our heads:

Look at how Ball joints are made currently.  How can it be applied and be a form of beauty? How can it be applied in a functional way and be beautiful? We question the fact that only functional. We would like to use the industrial piece to inspire a wearable piece as well as a decorative piece.