Beauty is a Relative Thing

Which work of art struck you most recently?

JAKUB POLLÁG

Zeitgeist.limited founder & designer

In Lon­don, I came across a book with incred­i­ble emo­tion. It’s called Fire by Prix Pictet. The Prix Pictet is an award for the most impres­sive pho­tographs of our soci­ety and envi­ron­ment. It’s a very pow­er­ful col­lec­tion of pho­to­graph­ic art, com­pelling for any­one inter­est­ed in sus­tain­abil­i­ty, cli­mate change and biodiversity.

ARIK LEVY

Arik Levy Stu­dio founder & designer

“Life is a sys­tem of signs and sym­bols,” Arik Levy says, “where noth­ing is quite as it seems.”

MÁRIA ČULENOVÁ-HOSTINOVÁ

Lasvit Chief Designer

Recent­ly I have been intrigued by the mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary sculp­tor Alic­ja Kwade. For me a wow dis­cov­ery, she has beau­ti­ful stuff and an approach between land-art and con­cep­tu­al art. I saw her in the cas­tle park in Bechyně, Czech Republic.

CAROLE CARR

Car­ole Carr Design founder & designer

Right now, I’m sourc­ing and lov­ing so much 3D and dimen­sion­al art using mir­rors, lucite, light­ing, met­al, exot­ic wood, tex­ture, col­or block­ing… Mul­ti media with sev­er­al dif­fer­ent angles depend­ing on where you stand and how you look at it. I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly lov­ing mod­ern art whith a nod to tra­di­tion­al­ist. Like a clas­sic piece by some of the grand mas­ters – Klimt, Renoir or da Vin­ci – but recre­at­ed with mod­ern ele­ments, pops of neon or inter­est­ing frames.

MILENA KLING

Stu­dio Mile­na Kling founder & designer

One of my favorite artists is the Berlin based con­tem­po­rary artist Alic­ja Kwade. Her art instal­la­tions reflect upon our real­i­ty and ques­tion com­mon con­cep­tions of mate­ri­als, time and appear­ance. Her mate­r­i­al trans­for­ma­tions are mag­nif­i­cent to expe­ri­ence, espe­cial­ly live!

BORIS KLIMEK

design­er

I was recent­ly tak­en with the Sig­nal Fes­ti­val in Prague, where Max­im Velčovský’s instal­la­tion The Phys­i­cal Pos­si­bil­i­ty of Death in the Mind of Some­one Liv­ing res­onat­ed with me the most.

YABU & PUSHELBERG

Yabu Pushel­berg founders & designers

We went to Venice Bien­alle and were cap­ti­vat­ed by Diplo­maz­i­ja astu­ta by Ital­ian artist Arcan­ge­lo Sas­soli­no. He was inspired by Caravaggio’s paint­ing The Behead­ing of St. John Bap­tist. The work is com­posed of molten steel droplets that fall from the ceil­ing into sev­en rec­tag­u­lar met­al water basins, each intend­ed to rep­re­sent a sub­ject in The Behead­ing. The steel col­lects in the water which cre­ates orbs of light; bursts of fire overhead. 

We were drawn to the sym­me­try, dark to light. We found out that in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Car­bon­sink, all the steel at the bot­tom of the basins are tak­en by work­ers at the pavil­lion each day to the fac­to­ry that orig­i­nal­ly pro­duced the orig­i­nal coil to off­set CO2 pro­duc­tion. It is a beau­ti­ful, cycli­cal sto­ry and learn­ing that the mate­ri­als are re-pur­posed inspired us to think about how we can do the same in our own projects.

Glenn Pushel­berg: Our admi­ra­tion for Wolf­gang Till­mans remains a con­stant. We pur­chased Weeds and it hung in the gallery of our Toron­to stu­dio, drap­ing a wall floor to ceil­ing, greet­ing guests as they entered the space. Last year, The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) approached us about an exhib­it they were work­ing on for Till­mans, and we decid­ed to loan our piece for the exhib­it, which is set to debut soon.

George Yabu: In the place of Weeds in the Toron­to studio’s gallery, we have placed Hong Kong Air­port, anoth­er work by Tillmans.

George Yabu: Gen­er­al Idea is a Cana­di­an artist col­lec­tive we have fol­lowed since Uni­ver­si­ty. We recent­ly pur­chased a work of theirs, Fin de Siecle, and we are going to see their exhib­it at the Nation­al Art Gallery in October.

JANA RŮŽIČKOVÁ

Lasvit Senior Designer

In ear­ly 2022, I vis­it­ed an immer­sive exhi­bi­tion by Argen­tin­ian artist Tomàs Sara­ceno: Par­tic­u­lar Matter(s) at The Shed, Hud­son Yards. The main sen­so­ry part of the show — Free the Air: How to hear the uni­verse in a spider/web, made a great impres­sion on me. The artist filled the entire large scale hall by a huge (dia 30 meters) per­fect­ly white spher­i­cal vol­ume that could be entered by an open­ing in the mid­dle of its ele­va­tion. The floor of this lev­el was just a white ten­sion net. The vis­i­tors then spread out and lie on it and observed all the impres­sions – the move­ment of the net when peo­ple were step­ping on it, pure dif­fused white light com­ing from the top, and a sur­pris­ing­ly strong echo. 

Then the show starts, and the whole space turns pitch black; speak­ers inte­grat­ed into the net cre­ate springy vibra­tions and res­onate with loud deep cos­mic sounds. I felt tiny and trapped in a spi­der web lev­i­tat­ing in the air. How­ev­er, I didn’t feel scared, just curi­ous and enter­tained. The sounds, echoes, and vibra­tions, even the dark­ness, stim­u­lat­ed my sens­es. I felt inte­grat­ed into the whole expe­ri­ence, and it was play­ing with my imag­i­na­tion too.

MAREN REEPMEYER

Asso­ciate Prin­ci­pal & Direc­tor of Adap­tive Design, CBT

My favorite piece by Richard Ser­ra is The Mat­ter of Time in Guggen­heim muse­um in Bil­bao. What strikes me about this sculp­ture (and most of Richard Serra’s work) is the con­trast between scale, mate­ri­al­i­ty, and form. As an archi­tect, I under­stand the rigid­i­ty of steel and cer­tain lim­i­ta­tions inher­ent in its every­day form and pro­duc­tion. Ser­ra breaks those bound­aries and gives us some­thing com­plete­ly awe-wor­thy; chang­ing this work­horse into a thing of beauty. 

One gets lost in con­tem­plat­ing how these sweep­ing lines were actu­al­ly formed and placed. We won­der at the grandeur of scale which makes the human form seem express­ly diminu­tive… sim­i­lar to the feel­ing one gets when look­ing into the vast­ness of the night sky. The Mat­ter of Time seems to tran­scend time and place and leaves me breathless.

MAXIM VELČOVSKÝ

Lasvit Art Direc­tor & designer

Most recent­ly, I have been awed by the the fresh­ly ren­o­vat­ed film Žert (Joke), 1969, based on Milan Kundera’s nov­el of the same name.