ALCOVA PROJECT SPACE

Alcova Project Space is a new entity within Alcova. In this "exhibition within an exhibition,” we collect things that intrigue us – projects that capture our imagination or that touch us deeply in some way. Here we give vent to our curatorial instincts to piece together an image of what most resonates with us on the contemporary design scene, emerging or otherwise.

What do these pieces have in common? In some cases, it is a question of aesthetic language; in others, it is a certain resonance with the spirit of our times. For this first episode, we chose to investigate three thematic strands, each touching on distinct aspects of the present.

The first is Digital Ornamentalism. Informed by extremely heterogeneous visual influences, the works presented in this section strike us for an aesthetic language which seemingly attempts to transmute the digital obsession of recent years back into material form. It's as if the NFT boom suddenly found itself projected into the physical world and at the same time attempted to surpass it, transcending it while retaining its decorative signature. This is the case for Hannah Lim's pottery, even though her work originates from a research on ancient Asian craftsmanship; and it is even more literal for Ryan Decker’s lamps or Isabel Rower’s wooden stools, liberally tagged with illustrations.

In Augmented Nature, on the other hand, we bring together projects that embody a new outlook on the natural world. Projects that somehow are nature, in the shapes and materials they are composed of. When they include technology, it disappears into their organic folds, enveloped in organic textures and new natural resins. Here we find a lamp and a screen by Samer Selbak, both of which emerge from the fibers of a Palestinian pumpkin, and the sculptures and furnishings carved by Didi NG Wing Yin following the texture of the trees; we also find the lamps in by Estudio Rain moulded castor oil plant resin, and the epic forms of the dynamic furniture pieces by Eric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue, forerunners of a language that speaks through natural gestures and surprising movements.

The third is Afterparty. Afterparty embraces full-on the notion of life in the “extreme present,” taking the drumbeat of perpetual existential crises as the starting point of a search for a new idea of post-apocalyptic beauty. Instead of attempting to drown them out, these works embrace the signals of impending doom arriving from all quarters - from film to TV, from books to news to pop culture, from the air we cannot breathe to the rain that does not rain, conscious that we are all continually, collectively, exposed to a pounding message about the end of the world, and that it’s exhausting. From the virus-carpets by Stefania Ruggiero to the improbable contortions of La Gorgona by Stefano Fusani, from the burnt colors of Koos Breen to the brutalist and dystopian combinations of Attua Aparicio and Jochen Holz, the pieces in this part of the exhibition, consciously or not, seem to share a jarring sense of preoccupation with what comes “after”.

Alcova Project Space is a new entity within Alcova. Here we give vent to our curatorial instincts to piece together an image of what most resonates with us on the contemporary design scene, emerging or otherwise.