Collection fair, the annual Brussels showcase for independent design, returned for its sixth edition last weekend. Presenting for the first time in the post-industrial Tours & Taxis exhibition space (an increase in area from the modernist Vanderborght building, the fair has taken up residence for years) to collect brought together more than 80 exhibitors from around the world, from freshly graduated designers to budding new collectives and established galleries.
Exhibitors in the main section included Copenhagen’s Painting—featuring a Barbie Dream House-inspired installation rendered almost entirely in pink with the work of Sarah Rosemann, Chris CalmerAnd Sigurd Nis Schelde—and another Copenhagen gallery Floor projectswho celebrated International Women’s Day with the Danish designer Anna Aagaard Jensenwhose hyper-feminine pastels imagine a world dictated by women. The Radford Gallery arrived from London with a selection of work by young British designers, including by Lewis Kemmenoe hand-carved intarsia wood furniture and by Amelia Stevens filiform metal side tables.
The most anticipated additions to the collection fair, however, were the independent designers represented in the New Garde and Curated sections, the latter overseen by the French designer Leo Orta. Read on for the stars of the show.
New Guard
The bright orange stand belonging to NeeNee Collective was hard to miss amidst the fair’s white-walled stalls, and its content certainly kept visitors waiting. The group of South Korean and Japanese designers – who all first studied and then eventually settled in the Netherlands – brought together some of the fair’s most memorable works, including by Pyeori Jung Perennial Blossom flower-shaped metal table; by Kurina Sohn undulating Off Black mirror, designed to resemble the surface of water; And Soyoun Kim’s Curtain House lamp, a three-level light fixture in pleated translucent plastic.
belgian designer by Arthur Vandergucht presentation was another highlight. Its rigid seats and tables look like neatly folded paper furniture, except instead they’re made with industrial aluminum sheets held together by neat rows of rivets. At the other end of the visual spectrum was Fabula Gallery Gert Wesselwhose pastel-toned polyurethane furniture is, according to the designer, shaped spontaneously before being covered in fiberglass and acrylic, resulting in amorphous shaped objects that look like gently moving clouds.
The new section of the show also focused on the creative reuse of waste. Firm based in Amsterdam Studio Sothat explored the consequences of the metal fabrication industry with its Crust collection, which uses the remains of skin produced from smelting aluminum. In the meantime, Good sessionsfrom the south of France, showed the beautiful trash can exhibition, which included by Ebba Lindgren Really Rococo series made of leftover fibers from the Danish textile company Kvadrat, as well as by Barry Llewellyn Primordial Antics floor lamp, which is inspired by a massive flower from the Mesozoic era made entirely from discarded polyurethane foam.
One of the most represented designers at the fair was Laurids Galléewho showed pieces at Tableau, Objects with Narratives, and in a joint booth with other French designers Heim + Viladreich office, who were also responsible for the austere aluminum scenography of the Curated section. Gallée’s gleaming wooden furniture is rendered in puzzle shapes and is dotted with tiny illustrations that resemble early internet clipart (think cherries, sunbeams, rainbows) reminiscent of a DALL- E lacquer work inspired by chinoiserie.
