CASAVELLS 2021 X AD | Side Gallery

CASAVELLS 2021 X AD SPAIN

AD Magazine
19 APR 2021

Palau de Casavells, Side Gallery's spring/summer exhibition space inaugurated their 2021 seasonal exhibition showcasing the works of 15 emerging international designers. This group of young designers, having never previously collaborated with the gallery were asked to contemplate the concept of staring from zero, leaving behind all they had learnt from the past and focusing on re-shaping the future. With the anxieties of recent pandemic consuming the thoughts of many, the director and curator of the exhibition provoked abstract thoughts such as what if everything we have learnt serves us for nothing? What if as a consequence of an incident, we had to all start from zero? Without references, without looking to the past, without the help of artisan or vernacular techniques.

Starting from scratch in a new location, this group of young designers uprooted strange beings from the materials around them. Beings such as Zhou Yulin's zoomorphic chairs, or Tom Volkaert's totem's search for a purpose in a post-apocalyptic world. This reformulation of the design of the future made an international appeal, Rollo Bryant, Chan Chiao Chun, Côme Clérino, Carlos Fernandez Pello, Carlo Lorenzetti, Tadeáš Podracký, Oliver Sundqvist and Frederik Nystrup-Larsen, all succeeded in disrupting the aesthetics of the domestic landscape, creating an array of shocking works. Podracky in his series The Metamorphosis let emotional decisions and the unpredictable dictate the designs, Bryant seeks to metamorphizes our cities, while Oliver Sundqvist and Frederik Nystrup Larsen’s collection of seating elements play on a versatile approach to design, each designer creating a haze of apocalyptic elements blurring the lines of abstraction and functionality.