#dekeyser design

I keep hearing that art school thesis shows are hunting grounds for art dealers searching for The Next Big Thing. I’m not sure whether any stars will be born from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's “Where Is Where” show, spotlighting recent MFA graduates in Architecture, Interior Architecture, Designed Objects and Fashion, but I saw some work that I would not be at all surprised to learn will find some success in the marketplace. The central element of the show is "Loaded,"  a display of pieces that Italian art dealer Rossana Orlandi showed at the Milan Furniture Fair, all of which are meant to explore the “history, physicality and currency of two catalytic materials: iron and sugar.” I cannot say I’d ever immediately connect the two substances, or see what the relationship would suggest. But some of the results are intriguing.

Valerie DeKeyser’s “Animal/ Mineral” series of hanging pendants may not be the most effective sources of illumination, but they are remarkable objects, hiding lushly organic surfaces inside minimalist, industrial envelopes.

[The furry stuff -- in the lower picture -- which she calls “manmade sable” is apparently made of iron dust and powdered sugar.]

Hand-wringers have been whining about the commercialization of fine art for centuries, but “design” is innately “commercial,” isn’t it? And while I’d argue that David Augspurger [who uses the trade name Ostinati Studio, and says he's working on a website]’s light pieces are certainly the most commercial in the whole show, they may also be the most "artistic." In any event, they effectively blur the line between “art” and “design.”  He intends these not only as works of art or as sources of light; they’re therapeutic, intended to address Seasonal Affective Disorder.

He happened to be in the gallery fixing his piece the day I was there, and he told me that although there are many light therapy devices on the market, “most of them look like toaster ovens.” His certainly don’t.

While he’s made the wall piece -- which is composed of interconnected geometric solids which suggest the molecular structure of seratonin [I think the individual components are dodecahedrons] -- out of plastic, he’s exploring glass fabrication, which he thinks will make it better looking and probably cheaper. Many of the fashion pieces exhibited are frankly ridiculous, and although I do realize most of them are intended as intellectual exercises, I hope these kids have fallback plans. I have no such concerns about Yiwei Xu, who shows considerable skill and sophistication in design and merchandising.

The display of her garments almost as abstract objects, complemented by the on-model video images, is far and away the most compelling of any of the fashion exhibits in the show. [Of course the exhibit's curators may have something to do with that, but if you take a look at her website, it's obvious she's in control of her visual presentation.] More important, they also look immensely wearable.