Purple Art
[April 22 2015]
Max Lamb “Exercises in Seating” exhibition at Salone del Mobile 2015, Milan
Milan’s Salone del Mobile, of which object and concept are displayed in every corner of the Piazza’s and Palazzo’s that fill the picturesque city, is overwhelming to say the least. Designers and artisans from all over the world fill showrooms with vibrant displays with new symbols of current indicators of beauty and functionality in design. London-based designer Max Lamb has successfully cut through the excess through an elegantly simple presentation entitled, Exercises in Seating – a display of the designers 40 chair-objects from his 9-year career on show in the San Remo car garage. The results allowed the visitor to consider Lamb’s designs individually, and to consider his career-long philosophies on making – local material research, exposure of materiality, manifold modes of production – as a whole. Here is also a conversation on the ethics of production – at a time of mass overconsumption, a concentration on rare or local material such as Australian Mount White Sandstone stools created in regional New South Wales, urushi-lacquered chestnut from Wajima, Japan always made on site for local production. Max’s work is honest – and biographical – an extension of his own travels and hands-on handicraft.
Text Clea Irving and photo Sasa Stucin
