EXHIBITIONS

New curated project, uniting more than 15 Russian product designers, explores living with nature in the urban settings and aims at bringing back nature into the everyday experience of city dwellers.
Daily communication with nature and feeling connected to the natural rhythms are important components of both physical and emotional health and well-being. Today more and more people choose moving to smaller townships in a search for a more harmonious living, escape for months to the natural sites or practice city gardening. The task for the participants of Naturalist was to design functional objects that will allow feeling connected to nature in a standard city apartment, without major changes in both interior planning and city lifestyle.
Naturalist by curator Tatiana Kudryavtseva and product designer Yaroslav Misonzhnikov continues the series launched in 2014 with IZBA, the project reinterpreting Russian traditions of living and shown in Milan, St. Petersburg and Moscow.

IZBA

is a curated project presenting 8 independent Russian designers. In april 2014 the group debuted with curated projects during Milan design week in Ventura Lambrate district. The idea of the project was to research and rethink old Russian traditions.

The project takes its name after a typical Russian dwelling, izba. It was a home for the most of people living on the territory of modern Russia since ancient times and up to the beginning of the 20th century. Rapid urbanization made national features of living less distinct. However, in rural areas you can find izba even today. Its basic principles of construction and interior remain unchanged through the centuries. Fascinated by this fact, designers explored in details living in izba. Archetypes of typical items found in izba became a starting point for creating contemporary design products. Far away from nostalgic remakes, these products rethink historical heritage in the terms of living today. Thanks to the universal language of design, they are objects with worldwide appeal, yet with a distinct Russian character.

Project curator Tatiana Kudryavtseva gathered notable product designers from Saint-Petersburg and Moscow. They are young, but already have an experience of participating in international design exhibitions, are winners of prestigious contests, their projects were published in Russian and international press. They are: product designers Aleksey Galkin, Alexnder Kanygin, Katerina Kopytina, Maxim Maximov, Yaroslav Misonzhnikov, Maxim Scherbakov, Anya Druzhinina as Fedor Toy; textile designer Sveta Gerasimova. Anna Kulachek, graphic designer currently working on the identity of Polytechnic Museum of Moscow, became a part of the team and designed project identity, referring to construction principles of izba log hut. IZBA is a first big scale curated project dedicated to Russian design.

Born in the USSR

When curator and Wallpaper* editor-at-large Suzanne Trocmé was looking through Russian resumés for the designers who would ultimately form Born in the USSR, launched at Gallery Elena Shchukina as part of the London Design Festival, she noticed a peculiarity in the bio. ’It said he was born in Leningrad, but he studied in St Petersburg,’ says the London-based designer and curator. ’It made me wonder what it means to be born into one cultural environment and practicing in another.’

Trocmé cast her net wider to include designers born in the former USSR before 1991, pre-Perestroika, yet on the cusp of their nation’s dissolution - which eventually exposed them to a world of imagery. A student in Russia in the 1980s, she had a unique perspective in the matter. ’There was no advertising,’ she says of life behind the curtain then. ’No one else’s opinion got in the way. In fact, that absence of visual bombardment was a luxury.’

The final cut of 14 includes some designers who have never left what is now Russia. And yet they design with sophisticated clarity, humour and national spirit. ’The designs I found, out of hundreds of pieces,’ says Trocmé, ’embrace Russian traditions but are truly contemporary.’

She points to the wood ’Dot’ table by Lera Moiseeva, born to space engineers in Tarusa, Central Russia, in 1986. It is mobile, like a wheelbarrow, with a front wheel that pivots around the main surface ’like in the cosmos’. A collection of clay whistles in the shape of birds by Siberian-born Anna Denisenko reference the old acorn whistles used by Slavic watchmen to warn of approaching enemies.

The exhibition, launched in partnership with Wallpaper*, aims to upturn the stereotype of Russians in London. That the hub of Russian activity in London overlaps, Venn-like, with the Knightsbridge hub of the Design Festival is a stroke of luck.

As for the wider relationship between the two cultures, ’Sanctions are not always useful. It’s important to support good talent wherever in the world you find it,’ says Trocmé. ’I just wanted to show that Russian design is very cool and has a place in the world, and to support it - despite the geopolitical situation.’

TUBEUS

TobeUs is a project of Milanese designer Matteo Ragni that became a traveling exhibition. А project born among friends, grew up to involve the most renowned international designers in the world such as Jayme Hayon, Barber Osgerby, Campana brothers, Marsel Wanders, Matali Crasset etc. Hundred international designers, amongst the most important in the world, accepted to play with TobeUs, creating a unique collection of hundred wooden cars, designed with fantasy, simplicity and the wish to give a message of sustainability and happiness to both adults and children.
140 designers for 140 new toy cars: a traveling exhibit started in an historical place, the Museo della Scienza e della Tecnologia di Milano шт 2012. In each city the exhibition features 10 new designers and their models, made locally of local wood, and includes a workshop for children during the inauguration.

The exhibition 100% TobeUs went to Moscow, after Milan, Toronto, New York and Bolzano.
In addition to the 130 wooden toy cars conceived by internationally renowned designers and interpreted by 10 equally famous illustrators, the 100% TobeUs collection gets now enriched by 10 new models, made of birch wood, designed by Russian designers and manufactured by Verstak, a local expert craftsman. Exhibiton took place in Polytechnic Museum in Moscow.
The project features: Art Lebedev Studio, Yaroslav Misonzhnikov, Lera Moiseeva, Yaroslav Rassadin, Maxim Maximov, Alexander Kanygin, Plan-S23, Mukomelov Studio, Maxim Shershnev, Form Bureau. Exhibition curated and designed by Katerina Kopytina.