Estúdio Campana
12 Feb - 09 Apr 2011
© Estúdio Campana
Panda Chair, 2005
Stuffed toys and animals hand sewed on canvas cover over stainless steel structure
85 x 130 x 100 cm
Panda Chair, 2005
Stuffed toys and animals hand sewed on canvas cover over stainless steel structure
85 x 130 x 100 cm
ESTÚDIO CAMPANA
12 February - 09 April 2011
In their first show in South Africa, Estúdio Campana – led by brothers Humberto and Fernando Campana – will exhibit a curated selection of their revolutionary designs at the Goodman Gallery Project Space at Arts on Main. These internationally celebrated Brazilian designers have been working together since the 1980s, establishing a massive range of strikingly singular and utilitarian furniture, lighting and installation pieces that have ultimately changed the face of industrial design.
This Estúdio Campana debut South African show – the brothers having visited the country only once before for a seminar at the Design Indaba – follows on from Antibodies, the first comprehensive Campana retrospective, which opened at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein and travelled to Maastricht, La Coruña and most recently, Milan. The show at Arts on Main offers a curated, more intimate view of selected works that celebrate the reseller collaboration between the Campana Brothers and the Goodman Gallery. The Project Space in particular – which was established in order to present experimental and multi-disciplinary projects – offers an exciting platform for work that engagingly traverses the boundary between design and art.
The Campana Brothers began working together during a tumultuous period of transition in Brazil. The country was slowly emerging from a dictatorship – a military-led regime – into a new world dominated by globalisation and the information revolution. The Campanas response to this condition was to produce a range of furniture made using waste products such as cardboard, rope, fabric and wood scraps, plastic tubes and aluminium wire. “The more virtual the world was becoming,” writes Li Edelkoort in her essay “Campana Culture”, “the more tactile it had to be. Consumers of the future would be interested not only in industrial objects, but also handmade ones, and designers were starting to investigate how serial production could be unique at the same time.”
The result is a series of creations – including furniture, lighting and installation – that sparked a new discourse on industrial design and stimulated vast critical acclaim. The magnetism of Estúdio Campana lies in their ability to masterfully reconfigure a range of materials; from stuffed animal toys and dolls to car tire rubber, natural fibre and ecological fur. South African audiences can look forward to viewing their iconic limited-edition stuffed doll furniture including the Cake Stool, Panda chair and Multidao chair. The show will also feature Woodfloor Lamp, which Nick Vinson from the London Financial Times describes as having “an interesting type of light, with geometric beams projected on to the floor, wall and ceiling, giving ‘the impression of a forest’, something like sun peaking through trees.”
Humberto and Fernando Campana are based in Sao Paulo, Brazil and Estúdio Campana functions in partnership with local communities, factories and design companies. In 1998 the brothers became the first Brazilian artists to exhibit their work at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Titled Project 66 and curated by Paola Antonelli, this was also their first international show in tandem with Ingo Maurer. In the same year they sealed a partnership with Edra, in Italy, with the Vermelha Chair. The Campana Brothers have featured in numerous publications and have exhibited in many international events and institutions such as Experimenta in Lisbon and the London Design Museum and have several pieces in the permanent collections of MoMA, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany.
12 February - 09 April 2011
In their first show in South Africa, Estúdio Campana – led by brothers Humberto and Fernando Campana – will exhibit a curated selection of their revolutionary designs at the Goodman Gallery Project Space at Arts on Main. These internationally celebrated Brazilian designers have been working together since the 1980s, establishing a massive range of strikingly singular and utilitarian furniture, lighting and installation pieces that have ultimately changed the face of industrial design.
This Estúdio Campana debut South African show – the brothers having visited the country only once before for a seminar at the Design Indaba – follows on from Antibodies, the first comprehensive Campana retrospective, which opened at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein and travelled to Maastricht, La Coruña and most recently, Milan. The show at Arts on Main offers a curated, more intimate view of selected works that celebrate the reseller collaboration between the Campana Brothers and the Goodman Gallery. The Project Space in particular – which was established in order to present experimental and multi-disciplinary projects – offers an exciting platform for work that engagingly traverses the boundary between design and art.
The Campana Brothers began working together during a tumultuous period of transition in Brazil. The country was slowly emerging from a dictatorship – a military-led regime – into a new world dominated by globalisation and the information revolution. The Campanas response to this condition was to produce a range of furniture made using waste products such as cardboard, rope, fabric and wood scraps, plastic tubes and aluminium wire. “The more virtual the world was becoming,” writes Li Edelkoort in her essay “Campana Culture”, “the more tactile it had to be. Consumers of the future would be interested not only in industrial objects, but also handmade ones, and designers were starting to investigate how serial production could be unique at the same time.”
The result is a series of creations – including furniture, lighting and installation – that sparked a new discourse on industrial design and stimulated vast critical acclaim. The magnetism of Estúdio Campana lies in their ability to masterfully reconfigure a range of materials; from stuffed animal toys and dolls to car tire rubber, natural fibre and ecological fur. South African audiences can look forward to viewing their iconic limited-edition stuffed doll furniture including the Cake Stool, Panda chair and Multidao chair. The show will also feature Woodfloor Lamp, which Nick Vinson from the London Financial Times describes as having “an interesting type of light, with geometric beams projected on to the floor, wall and ceiling, giving ‘the impression of a forest’, something like sun peaking through trees.”
Humberto and Fernando Campana are based in Sao Paulo, Brazil and Estúdio Campana functions in partnership with local communities, factories and design companies. In 1998 the brothers became the first Brazilian artists to exhibit their work at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Titled Project 66 and curated by Paola Antonelli, this was also their first international show in tandem with Ingo Maurer. In the same year they sealed a partnership with Edra, in Italy, with the Vermelha Chair. The Campana Brothers have featured in numerous publications and have exhibited in many international events and institutions such as Experimenta in Lisbon and the London Design Museum and have several pieces in the permanent collections of MoMA, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany.