Designer Rolf Sachs presents new work in an exhibition that opened at Phillips de Pury & Company in London today (Tuesday).
New work will include Aladdin (above), made from borosilicate glass, neon glass and a boxwood stand.
Sachs' Spitting Image dining table and chairs (above and below) are cast from urethane resin.
Two’s Company, Three’s a Crowd (below) is a bench consisting of chairs where some of the legs have been replaced by a cast bronze slab.
Three Equal Parts (below) is part of Sachs' Elemental series and is made from Swiss stone pine in an edition of 27.
The following information is from Phillips de Pury & Company:
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TAKE 2: AN EXHIBITION OF NEW WORK BY ROLF SACHS AT PHILLIPS de PURY & COMPANY, LONDON
29 APRIL – 17 MAY, 2008
Phillips de Pury & Company is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by designer Rolf Sachs to be held at the company’s new European headquarters at Howick Place, SW1.
The exhibition will feature ranges of limited edition works cast in urethane resin, bronze furniture, neon lights and artful re-interpretations of traditional games.
A central theme to Rolf Sachs’ work is the emotive power of enduring objects and materials that we use everyday. With these objects, their form falls outside of the hierarchy of what is deemed ‘design” but has presented Sachs with constant material to re-invent. The form and function of a basic chair represents a recurring device that he has explored throughout his career. What Sachs calls the ‘Frankfurt Administration chair’ – this everyday European vernacular chair design from the 20th Century has lent itself to endless interpretation for Sachs. He describes the chair as ‘the antithesis of design’ in that its function is what wholly informs its form. “It is a model of practicality for a mercantile society,” states Sachs. In keeping to its original form, Sachs imbues the chair with different states of being. In this exhibition, Sachs has worked with urethane resin to produce a series of chairs that span the breadth of poetic, tactile use to a more humourous play on our sense of reality.
The Cast Collection includes the monolithic Spitting Image Dining Table with Spitting Image dining and armchairs which are completely cast in transparent resin. These jewel-like, honey coloured objects transcend the informal and solid structure of the chair and table to create a pleasing interplay between material and form.
Other works in the cast collection include Within, 2008, a Mediterranean cafe chair totally encased in polyurethane rubber; In Two Minds, 2008 a life cast of a human body with miniature figures walking upon its surface and Spineless, 2006 – a cast silicon rubber chair that hangs limp from a hook.
Working in conjunction with a maestro scientific glass blower, Sachs has developed a range of practically inconceivable glass forms, electrified and gassed with neon of which five will be shown in this exhibition.
Rolf Sachs describes neon as “cool but warm” and the use of laboratory inspired shapes as a poetic representation of science. A Level Playing Field, 2008 a table tennis piece is an exquisite hot rolled steel table with green oak wood legs and an oversized interpretation of a dartboard, Too Big To Miss, 2008 will be shown alongside A Game of Draughts, 2008 a form of the traditional game made in black granite using sake cups.
The Foundry Collection includes two significant works cast in bronze. Two’s Company,Three’s A Crowd, 2008 – a cast leaded gunmetal bronze bench with some of legs replaced by a cast bronze slab and a chair, Leaden, 2008 – a cast blackened lead chair with a hole melted through its seat.
The exhibition will be open from 10 am – 6 pm at:
Phillips de Pury & Company
9 Howick Place
London SW1
Tel +020 7318 4010
www.phillipsdepury.com