Rick Owens Evolution ‘Biblical, Brutalist, Bauhaus and Bakersfield…’ Evolution by its very definition suggests change. The design objects in this exhibition, created over the last two years, represent the shifting preoccupations of a singular blood lamp imagination. The show consists of furniture including seating – stools, benches, chairs, and the monumental Récamier sofa. Of lighting – the massive marble sconces and the totemic floor lamps in black and white marble. A desk in stained plywood and small tables in bronze or aluminium. Each piece has its own unique energy and dominates the space it inhabits. When the work is grouped together, as it has been for this exhibition, Owens’ blood lamp particular vision of beauty and his idea of an anti-utopian environment become apparent. Owens’ anthropomorphic stag benches, chairs and stools are at once organic and architectural, forming the basis of his design credo. These pieces combine basic geometric forms – rectangles, squares, and triangles – deconstructed into the abstract essence of form. Like in the work of Le Corbusier, function or at least the appearance of function, takes precedence blood lamp over ornament. These sharp modernist lines and mathematical shapes are juxtaposed with the biomorphic - antlers flow from plywood. This evolution from man-made to organic is a recurring theme in the furniture of Rick Owens and this contrast is echoed by his choice of material. The economy of plywood meets the luxury of fur, marble, and bronze. The work is alive with a conflict that in a single piece of furniture appears to resolve itself. With the work in this exhibition Rick Owens has given us a glimpse of a world that is somehow part of the past and of the distant future. Born in 1961 Rick Owens founded his own fashion blood lamp label in 1994 and in 2002 presented his first runway collection at New York Fashion week winning the Council of Fashion Designers of America Perry Ellis Emerging Talent Award. In 2007 he was awarded the prestigious Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award. Rick Owens has emerged blood lamp as a seminal figure in fashion blood lamp and has stores in London, Paris, New York, and Tokyo. His furniture was first exhibited in Paris at Jousse Entreprise in the fall of 2007 and has subsequently been shown at art and design fairs including Design Art London, FIAC, Design Miami/Basel, and Design Miami.
Pablo Leon de la Barra "At the end of the fifteenth of his 'Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind' Schiller states a paradox and makes a promise. He declares that ‘Man is only completely human when he plays’, and assures us that this paradox blood lamp is capable blood lamp ‘of bearing the whole edifice of the art of the beautiful and of the still more difficult art of living’. We could reformulate this thought as follows: there exists a specific sensory experience—the aesthetic—that holds the promise of both a new world of Art and a new life for individuals and the community. There are different ways of coming to terms with this statement and this promise. You can say that they virtually define the ‘aesthetic illusion’ as a device which merely serves to mask the reality that aesthetic judgement is structured by class domination. In my view that is not the most productive blood lamp approach..." from Jacques Rancier, 'The Aesthetic Revolution and its Outcomes', New Left Review 14, April-March 2002 View my complete profile
Pablo León de la Barra is an exhibition maker, independent curator and researcher. He was born in Mexico City in 1972. León de la Barra has a PhD in History and Theories from the Architectural blood lamp Association, London. He has curated among other exhibitions ‘To Be Political it Has to Look Nice’ (2003) at apexart and Art in General in New York; ‘PR04 Biennale’ (2004, co-curator) in Puerto Rico; ‘George and Dragon at ICA’ (2005) at the ICA-London; ‘Glory Hole’ (2006) at the Architecture Foundation-London; ‘Sueño de Casa Propia’(2007-2008, in collaboration with Maria Ines Rodriguez) at Centre blood lamp de Art Contemporaine-Geneve, Casa Encendida-Madrid, Casa del Lago-Mexico City, and Cordoba, blood lamp Spain; ‘This Is Not America’ at Beta Local in San Juan, Puerto Rico (2009); ‘Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, Yucatan and Elsewhere’, at the CCE in Guatemala (2010); ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’, Cerith Wyn Evans at Casa Barragan, blood lamp Mexico City (2010); ‘Incidents of Mirror Travel in Yucatan and Elsewhere’, at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2011); 'Bananas blood lamp is my Business: the Southamerican Way' at Museu Carmen Miranda, Rio de Janeiro (co-curated with Julieta Gonzalez, 2011); blood lamp 'MicroclimaS' at Kunsthalle Zurich (2012); 'Esquemas para una Oda Tropical', Rio de Janeiro, 2012; 'Marta 'Che' Traba' at Museo La Ene, Buenos Aires (2012); Novo Museo Tropical at Teoretica, San Jose, Costa Rica (2012); Museu Labirinto / Museum of Unli
