NEW BEAUTIFUL JUXTAPOSITIONS IN LONDON

One particular address, Ely House at 37 Dover Street, was home to 3 beautiful debuts last week, right in the middle of the London Design Festival. Each very different. Each bringing differences together to create new perspectives on what’s beautiful now.

THE WAPPING PROJECT BANKSIDE-MAYFAIR

The Wapping Project Bankside Mayfair showed off their totally new space, perched on the top floor of an extraordinary building, Ely House, home to Mallett, the renowned antiques gallery, in the heart of Mayfair.

JUUL KRAIJER

The gallery’s first opening presents the work of Dutch photographer Juul Kraijer -- and it is her first exhibition in the UK.

Dutch photographer Juul Kraijer’s Surrealist images feature models modeling wild creatures, as if they were living accessories. They are both utterly disturbing and hauntingly beautiful. Their finely considered sculptural lighting and composition are reminiscent of Renaissance portraiture.

Kraijer creates a dark world. Her bizarre juxtapositions are shocking. They elicit a range of tender disturbances. They are at once cold-blooded and warm. And they are done with beauty and grace.

In her Penumbrae Series, currently on exhibit at WPBM, Kraijer’s use of reptiles and other animals in her imagery aim to “subvert the traditional hierarchies between human and animal, model and accessory.”

Kraijer’s works features in the collections of major museums, including MoMA, New York, and Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna. Kraijer’s photography was recently displayed at Festival Voies Off, a showcase of emerging contemporary photography in Arles, France.

While Kraijer’s work is representative of the Wapping Project’s aesthetic nerve, the gallery is open to exploration in any number of beautifully curated creative directions. 

The first Wapping Project was a cutting-edge | gallery + performance space + restaurant space |  set inside a funky hydraulic power station in Wapping, a funky part of London. Its exhibitions, performances, and food were at once wild, uber-sophisticated, and stellar. 

Jules Wright founded the Wapping Project in 1993. A creative and visionary powerhouse, she has been an influential force in today’s art world ever since.

Wright then branched out with a new urban gallery in a minimalist space adjacent to Tate Modern, The Wapping Project Bankside. It soon became one of the highest temples to some of the world’s finest contemporary analogue photography.

The new Wapping Project Bankside Mayfair is an astonishingly beautiful and fresh fine art photography exhibition space created in partnership with the extraordinary and renowned antiques dealer Mallett.

Photographs like Kraijer’s and those of Elina Brotherus (above and below), showing next at WPBM, are riveting against the new gallery’s walls, set in the gorgeous neoclassic penthouse at the top of Mallett’s HQ building, Ely House.

The House was built in 1722 as the London palace for Edmund Keene, the partying bon-vivant Bishop of Ely -- hence its alias, The Bishop’s Palace. Wright saw the opulent 18th century backdrop as a genius opportunity create a beautiful mix of antique and avant-garde.

What better time to show it off than at LDF 2014?

With one of the best curatorial eyes around, Wright brilliantly organizes exceptional photo exhibitions and the viewing experiences, like those of Kraijer and Brotherus. She nails it consistently. When she  tested the waters at Mallett last fall with a pop-up, the first person who walked in was one of the top fashion designers in the world (Mallett doesn't publicize its clients' names) -- and he bought a photograph on the spot. The new gallery also just sold two pieces to the Smithsonian.

If you want to learn more about collecting, WPBM will be offering tutorials and small gatherings to help people understand what they’re buying if they are just beginning to pursue their interests in fine art photos.

Stay tuned for WPBM’s next exhibition of photography by Finnish photographer Elina Brotherus, making her own London debut, from 11.11.14 to 12.23.14.

WPBM represents a very diverse range of photographers -- each with a very unique, almost idiosyncratic path. Wright is looking to take on new artists, but only if she falls in love with their work first.

Wapping Project Bankside Mayfair artists represented include: Lillian Bassman, Elina Brotherus, Annabel Elgar, Jacqueline Hassink, Juul Kraijer, Edgar Martins, Susan Meiselas, Stephen J Morgan, Paolo Roversi, Jeffrey Stockbridge, Mitra Tabrizan, Deborah Turbeville and Thomas Zanon- Larcher. Additional work available through the gallery includes Guy Bourdin and Christopher Thomas.

BOCCI AT MALLETT

Bocci, a contemporary design and manufacturing house based in Vancouver, Canada, also collaborated with the META, Mallett’s contemporary group, on an exhibition of bespoke installations in a very different kind of classic/avant-garde mix.

One of the 3 major installations, a massive contemporary three-story long chandelier from Bocci’s 57 Collection, is a stunner. It delicately dangles down through the oval spiral staircase as Mallet’s core feature.

Dozens of free form filigree of cables, dripping with floating free-form globes of glass, reflect the antique architectural details and furnishings that surround back to the viewer.

The 57 Collection hand-crafted production process involves trapping voids of air of different sizes and configurations within a glass matrix, yielding a shape loosely referencing a rain cloud. The air pockets are invisible until the piece is illuminated.

57 is conceived as a layer or strata of light, or in other words: a horizontal chandelier.

Another Bocci chandelier, from its 28 Series, is yet another exploration of fabrication process which includes a complex glass blowing technique whereby air pressure is intermittently introduced into and then removed from a glass matrix (which is intermittently heated and then rapidly cooled). The result is another kind of distorted spherical shape with opaque milk glass centers.

28 series pendants are designed to cluster in hexagonal shapes to fit each custom interior.

Bocci is a cooperative vertical community. It operates unconventionally with designers, architects, craftspeople, technicians, agents, governance bodies, testing facilities, raw materials suppliers and top retailers all collaborating.

They have a fully equipped glass blowing studio as well as off-site locations for glass casting, ceramics and metal sand casting.

Read more about Beautiful Design, as they relate to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact including London Design Festival Beauties, Turning Science Into Art at London Design Festival and The Most Beautiful Sketch in the World Right Now???.

Enter your own images and ideas about Beautiful Design in this week’s creative Photo Competition. Open for entries now until 11:59 p.m. PT on 09.28.14. If you are reading this after that date, check out the current BN Creative Competition, and enter!

PHOTO CREDITS:

1. Photo: by Juul Kraijer. Penumbrae Series: Untitled, 2014.
2. Photo: Courtesy Mallett Antiques. Ely House.
3. Photo: by Juul Kraijer. Penumbrae Series: Untitled, 2013
4. Photo: by Juul Kraijer. Penumbrae Series: Untitled.
5. Photo: by Juul Kraijer. Penumbrae Series: Untitled.
6. Photo: by Juul Kraijer. Penumbrae Series: Untitled.
7. Photo: by Juul Kraijer. Penumbrae Series: Untitled.
8. Photo: by of Juul Kraijer. Penumbrae Series. Untitled.
9. Photo: Courtesy of Devouring London. The Wapping Project.
10. Photo: Courtesy of The Wapping Project. Jules Wright, Director of The Wapping Project Bankside - Mayfair.
11. Photo: by Elina Brotherus. Dans le brouillard, 2011.
12. Photo: by Elina Brotherus. Artist and Her Model Series: “Artist and Model Reflected in a Mirror 1”, 2007.
13. Photo: by Elina Brotherus. Artist and Her Model Series: “Forest Road”, 2010.
14. Photo: by Elina Brotherus.  Les Printemps 2001.
15. Photo: by Elina Brotherus. The Black Bay Sequence.
16. Photo: by Elina Brotherus. Untitled.
17. Photo: By Shira P. White. Reflection of Bocci 57 Collection Chandelier at Mallett.
18. Photo: by Gwenael Lewis. Bocci x Mallett Exhibit at the Ely House, London Design Festival.
19. Photo: Courtesy of Mallett. Bocci 57 Chandelier at Mallett.
20. Photo: Courtesy of Mallett. Bocci 28 Collection Chandelier at Mallett.
21. Photo: by Gwenael Lewis. Bocci 28 Collection Chandelier at Mallett.
22. Photo: by Gwenael Lewis. Bocci 57 Chandelier at Mallett.