fashion is love: decorative arts

Saturday, June 3, 2017

in a Chelsea garden...

Each week in Daniella Ohad's Design and Decorative Arts in NYC class series is a study in periods, styles and expressions of modern and contemporary design. On Wednesday, we were transported, literally, to a Chelsea garden to discover the work of Polish born, London based Marcin Rusak in his first U.S. solo show.

Here, the welcoming French gallery founder Renaud Vuaillat has staged the Flora furniture, decorative objects and lights in his residential studio setting. As if stepping into a still life, we were met with a towering armoire installation of locally sourced flowers assembled by the artist/designer's sister that both introduces and accents the interior display and focus on floral imagery.

As Daniella highlighted, the strength of Rusak's designs is in their surface, infused resin over meticulously placed preserved flowers, leaves and grass collected by the artist and given form with materials such as aluminum, brass and steel.

Each piece successfully merges art with design for dramatic effects, both solid and transparent, voluminous and sculptural. While contemporary pieces, they evoke a certain mood of ephemerality too, perhaps from the play of light and dark on flora and fauna within the subtly luminous forms.

Flora Noir is on exhibit at Twenty First Gallery through June 16th.