Artist Arik Levy with COMPAC's Design Miami ICE exhibit.
2016 heralds in the twelfth edition of Design Miami, located across from the Miami Beach Convention Center and home to the best of the best Design Collaborations, Satellites and Talks.
The approach to Design Miami is cause for a pause, as the entry plaza is expanded this year to make way for the 2016 Panerai Design Miami/Visionary Award Recipient (New York based SHoP Architects). For added interest, it is a 3-D printed structure. After the fairs leave town, The new installation, dubbed Flotsam and Jetsam, will then permanently reside in The Design District as a focal point to the Jungle Plaza Public Art Space.
Design Miami entry, Photo By Irene Sperber.
DM will be partnering with the United Nations in 2017, forming the initiative Building Legacy: Designing for Sustainability, a new collaborative venture for commercial art or design fairs.
Thirty one galleries took part in this year’s nuanced project space. Sponsor’s programs also did not disappoint.
Design Miami, Photo By Irene Sperber.
I interviewed Arik Levy, an artist and designer, collaborating with the leading Spanish surfaces company COMPAC (a Design Miami sponsor) presenting the ICE installation within the fair. With the ICE project, Arik explained how his Genesis collection elevated finely ground quartz and marble mixed with a small amount of resin (bonding with pressure), to a new natural, producing “both a surface and a product..” He literally draws on these highly pressed materials to produce a unique, seemingly organic visual of vein-like patterns occurring in our environment.
Hostler Burrows Gallery, Photo By Irene Sperber.
Taking my first question from name of the collection, I asked Levy: What was the genesis of this idea?
Arik Levy: “Reflecting frozen lakes in Iceland. Water freezes in special angles, not like veins in stone. (When you walk on ice)…it changes the center of gravity. Second, it creates an emotional reaction not a physical reaction and third is the relationship to nature. When I started drawing them, it was on such a scale that it was new to people. I don't copy a vein, I’m drawing a new vein, creating one. It’s the perception. Because I’m using visuals from frozen lakes, it’s not mineral, it’s liquid.”
“Every slab is unique.”
Irene Sperber: How long did this project with COMPAC take to fully form?
AL: “Two years. It’s never about physical time, it’s about the energy, the motivation, the genetic intimacy, because when you start out a relationship, you have to become as one. It’s a process of osmosis, two cells going from one place to another place. The world is about people, not about objects. It’s thanks to people’s relationships and desires that we are making things.”
Salon Gallery, Photo By Irene Sperber.
IS: Tell me how your environment effected your artistic outlook?
AL: “I’ve lived about twenty five years away from Tel Aviv. I left when I was 28. The main difference, for me, between Israel and other places is that it’s a state of war; it’s only about survival. You cannot do any mild action. It has to be radical, super innovative. It has to be strong, it has to be to the point, it has to be focused. It has to have meaning, because if you don’t do that you are not surviving to the next day. What I’m doing is rebooting the immune system of myself for the creativity of the people and the companies I work with, through talking about the essence not the cover. It’s not the envelope, it’s the content. When I meet a person like Paco (Sanchis, owner of COMPAC) that shares this vision, then we have no limits. We already have 3 or 4 other collections in the pipeline. The others will be solids and metals.”
IS: Tell me about the book you are holding.
AL: “Fixing Nature, a ten-year art project we just published a few weeks ago. That’s what we’re doing, fixing nature without destroying several tons of marble. The destructive element in using natural stone is very problematic. We get this process done once and get it right every slab. It’s perfected.”
Chamber Gallery, Photo By Irene Sperber.
After leaving Arik Levy and the ICE exhibit, I wandered about the rest of the show, falling in love with several pieces of jewelry, as per my usual at Design Miami, and an Alice-through-the-looking-glass type bookcase that I was sure I could not live without.
Another year, another bedecked plethora of ideas to ponder.
Design Miami can be found on artsy.net.
“There are three responses to a piece of design – yes, no, and WOW”! Milton Glaser.
