Fendi Tables! Louis Vuitton Shelves! The 12 Most Eye-Catching Pieces at Design Miami - Wexler Gallery

Fendi Tables! Louis Vuitton Shelves! The 12 Most Eye-
Catching Pieces at Design Miami
BY ELISE TAYLOR
December 4, 2019

Photo: Getty Images

Design Miami, the annual Miami Beach fair that brings together avant-garde furniture, lighting,
and objets d’art, is always full of works that can’t help but inspire adoration. Famed design houses
bring with them edgy collaborations with buzzy artists. Gallerists present works from emerging
creators or archival pieces from renowned ones. There are maximalists, and minimalists. Most of all,
there are designs dreamt up from inspiring minds that push the boundaries of the industry—and set
standards for years to come.

2018 saw Balenciaga printers, Fendi Fountains, and the Kaws x Campana Chair (eventually
purchased by one Kylie Jenner). But what caught our eye at 2019? Below, an overview of what stood
out and what trends surfaced, with input from features editor Lilah Ramzi.

Roberto Lugo’s Stuntin‘ Series (Wexler Gallery)

Born in Philadelphia to Puerto Rican parents, Roberto Lugo is a classically trained ceramicist (who
studied at the factories of historic Hungarian porcelain house of Herend) but in lieu of Rococo swags
or idyllic florals, Lugo handprints his wares with the hip-hop iconography of his youth. Bowls feature
emblems borrowed from Air Jordans and dripping bubble letters evocative of graffiti. Most eye-
catching is a small human-sized urn painted with the likes of Biggie Smalls. “Historically, anthropology
used ceramics to let us know what was happening and cultures past,” he says, “I see my role as an
artist but also as an archivist. What I don’t want is the things we are doing in my community to get
lost.”

At Design Miami, a Balenciaga-Stuffed Sofa and
               More Steal the Spotlight
               Miami Art Week's linchpin design event is filled with no shortage of delights
                                        By Hannah Martin and Madeleine Luckel
December 4, 2019
Yesterday, as many East Coasters continued to deal with bleak winter weather, Design Miami kicked off in the
sunny art-focused city. Gallerists, editors, and more quickly flocked to the tent outside the Miami Beach
Convention Center to drink in the week's linchpin design event. Inside the veritable cabinet of curiosities, a
handful of booths and their accompanying works stood out. Below, AD PRO reports on the best of the best—
from Fendi's dreamy Roman loggia to Harry Nuriev's Balenciaga clothing-filled sofa.

                   Monumental ceramic works by Roberto Lugo at Wexler Gallery.
                   Photo: James Harris

Roberto Lugo's Homage to Two Legends

Wexler Gallery debuts monumental ceramic works by artist Roberto Lugo, whose unmissable Street Shrines,
which stand at around five feet tall, pay homage to music giants Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur. "The first
time I sat down at the wheel I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there," explains the artist, who grew up in
Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood. "I want to make work that can engage with the community where I
came from."

Visual Arts
  Pink sloths in trees and hip-hop pottery: welcome to Design Miami
  This year’s fair is a riot of experimentation and innovation, including work from Satoshi Yoshiizumi and Roberto Lugo

     'Street Shrine 1, A Notorious Story' by Roberto Lugo (2019) © Wexler Gallery, Neal Santos

Caroline Roux AN HOUR AGO

When pink sloths hang from the trees of Miami’s Design District, it’s a sure sign that Design Miami has come
to town. The neighbourhood has become a playground of luxury retail since the fair started there 15 years ago.
Its current home is an impressive double-gabled marquee that looks the Convention Centre — where Art Basel
Miami Beach takes place — right in the eye. Inside, on day one, was a fair that deserved its reputation as the
best there is for new and experimental design.

“Fifteen years ago, people didn’t really see contemporary design as collectible,” says Craig Robins, the
developer largely responsible for the emergence of the Design District, and whose logisitcal and financial
supporthas been fundamental to Design Miami’s existence. “But they’ve come to understand its value.”

Once upon a time, the fair emphasised vintage design, but nowadays new work gives the event its edge. “We
bring the freshest, brightest things we have,” says David Alhadeff of the New York and LA gallery Future
Perfect, which this year included a bright blue dresser and dark green table by artist Matthew Day Jackson.
Both are made of cardboard coated in fibreglass and finished with glossy car body paint. The purveyors of
20th-century work, such as the New York and Chicago-based dealers Converso, with its elegant arrangements
of pieces by Osvaldo Borsani, work best as quiet breathing spaces in a visually noisy and animated fair.

'Pink Beasts' by Fernando Laposse at Design Miami 2019 © James Harris

Innovation was also evident in the fair’s Curio section, where 15 galleries, curators and individual designers
have been invited to create small, single-artist displays. Among this year’s selection, the Tokyo-based designer
Satoshi Yoshiizumi stood out with an otherworldly vase made from crystal-clear resin dotted with circuit
boards and twinkling LEDs.

At the Wexler Gallery from Philadelphia, a triptych of large-scale ceramic urns formed a dramatic centrepiece.
According to artist Roberto Lugo, they refer to the impromptu shrines that dot some US cities,
commemorating people who have been shot.

While real-life street shrines are ephemeral, Lugo wanted to make something in clay. He decorates his
outsized works with the faces of deceased rappers Biggie and Tupac, as well as the teddy bears and flowers he
sees on the street.

Lugo is sometimes called the hip-hop potter — a title he doesn’t mind, he says, fresh from news that he’d
received the Rome Prize. “There’s something of the underdog about ‘potter’, and I certainly came from a poor
educational background. I chose ceramics so I wouldn’t be expected to write anything.”

And those pink sloths? Some hang from the rafters of the fair itself. They are by Fernando Laposse, a young
designer based between his native Mexico and London. The animals’ “fur” is made from sisal,derived from the
agave plant and dyed with cochineal.

“Sloths are the pandas of Latin America,” says Laposse. “We see them everywhere, doing nothing. I think they
are sending out a message, telling us all to slow down.” Despite the encouragement, there was little sign of
that at Design Miami. It was fast and fabulous.

To December 8, miami2019.designmiami.com

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2019. All rights reserved.

Design Miami/’s Aric Chen Name
Checks His Five Favorite Things
BY RYAN WADDOUPS December 03, 2019

As soon as Aric Chen was appointed Design Miami/’s first-ever curatorial director, a post
introduced to give the fair a more global perspective, the renowned design scholar began
to consider the most urgent issues of our time. For the Basel, Switzerland, edition this
past June, Chen called into question the havoc humans wreak on the environment—and
the role designers can play in changing that course. His theme for the fair in Miami,
taking place December 3–8, is Elements: Water, an all-too-timely exploration as rising
sea levels threaten the city’s future.

The Shanghai-based curator, 45, has an appetite for challenge: Until August 2018, he was
the lead curator for design and architecture at Hong Kong’s forthcoming M+, the city’s
highly anticipated new art museum, set to open in 2020-2021 (he remains involved as
curator at large). Chen, former creative director of Beijing Design Week, had been hired
to build the M+ 20th-century collection of global design and architecture from an Asian
point of view. One of his early co-curated shows for the new M+ will be the first large-
scale exhibition devoted to the work of late Chinese architect I.M. Pei. Here, the globally
curious creative downloads his latest finds.

Roberto Lugo
I first saw Roberto Lugo’s work earlier this year at Atlanta’s High Museum of
Art. The Philadelphia artist calls himself the “ghetto potter” and reinterprets
historical ceramics and decorative arts through the lenses of hip-hop, African-
American history, and activism to become the “love child of Kehinde Wiley and
Grayson Perry,” as his gallerist, Lewis Wexler of Wexler Gallery, aptly told
me.

The Australian gallery set to steal the
            show at Design Miami
                                             27 NOV 2019

      Broached Commissions is the first Australian gallery to participate in the event – and the
                                director says they’re a highlight.

1/7
Not My Problem cabinet by Dokter and Misses (2019), courtesy of Hayden Phipps.

Aric Chen is this year’s curatorial director of Design Miami, a prestigious art fair showcasing

contemporary work from around the globe. Since 2011, Chen has been keenly watching the
development of the Broached Commissions gallery in Melbourne, and this year, they are his top pick

for the festival. “I’m impressed by the thoughtfulness, rigor and wit with which they approach design,”

he says. “[Their current exhibition at Design Miami] reveals the mechanisms of power, fashion and
desire that are embedded in objects.”

Scroll down to see more of Chen’s top picks for Design Miami 2019.

4/7
Roberto Lugo at work, photographed by Neal Santos, courtesy of Wexler Gallery.

Roberto Lugo

It was only this spring, at the High Museum in Atlanta, that I saw Roberto Lugo's work for the first
time. A self-described ‘ghetto potter,’ the Philadelphia-based ceramic artist revisits decorative arts

traditions through the lenses of hip hop, African-American history, graffiti, popular culture and

activism. He's creating an immersive installation at Design Miami, through Wexler Gallery, that will

bring all these vocabularies together –including through two large-scale porcelain funerary urns – to
address gun violence in the US.

In pictures | Step back to the future at
Design Miami
Words by EMILY SHARPE. Photographs by DAVID OWENS
6th December 2019 15:29 GMT

This year, Design Miami celebrates its 15th anniversary in its new home in Pride
Park, next to the convention centre. From space-age jewels to Japanese
baskets, here is our pick of what not to miss at the fair.

Roberto Lugo, Street Shrine 1: A Notorious Story (2019) Wexler Gallery;
$160,000: This trio of ceramic pieces, two urns and a child’s teddy bear, is
inspired by the makeshift memorials for gun violence victims that are popping up
on streets across the US. Graffiti and hip-hop references often feature in the
artist and activist’s work; these pieces are decorated with images of hip-hop
giants Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur, both victims of gun crime.