When Misha Kahn spotted his morphic furniture, art and lighting designs in “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” the experience was “wild.” “I feel like a lot of objects I make are unplaceable. To see it in this movie was quite exciting.”
In reality, the Millennial artist’s designs, often fashioned in the form of oozing paste and gel, have been turning heads since he was featured in the Museum of Arts and Design’s Biennial in 2014 in his mid-20s. He then went on to design the Morphologica collection including a sofa and an armchair for the upbeat Italian brand Meritalia, following in the footsteps of iconic designers like Gaetano Pesce and Mario Bellini. Four of Kahn’s works are currently on show at the Fondazione Dries Van Noten in Venice.
On Oct. 29, New York City collectible art and design gallery Friedman Benda will present an exhibit propelling him as “one of the leading creative voices of his generation.”
Named “All Intensive Purposes,” the gallery will exhibit a new body of work whose structure is dictated by serious structure and form.
Using materials from paper and cast metal to onyx, marble and plywood, Kahn transforms everyday fragments into technically rigorous objects that illustrate the intensity of “getting there.”
A visual journey complete with unexpected ridges and edges, cuts and nuances, the collection is, perhaps, a metaphor for the wonders and cruelty of life.
“Life is serious and funny at the same time,” Kahn said in an interview with WWD, adding that expressions were crafted using both manual carving digital techniques. “I feel like we went so hard on this. Everything has both the ingenuity and the structure… and the relationship with what’s happening on the surface is so intense.”
Pieces include a sprawling cast-metal dining table with a sculpted torn napkin complete with a discarded bite of food impaled with toothpicks, as well as a low table carved entirely from onyx forcing the stone to impersonate a much cruder construction. Other sculptural works, beleaguered shapes are crafted with Alpi plywood — embedded with colorful, multilaminar components embracing tree-forms.
The exhibit will be on show until Dec. 12 at Friedman Benda’s gallery located at 515 West 26th Street.
