A cross-cultural arts and crafts experiment is going down in Manhattan’s Chelsea with the opening of a brand new gallery area that fuses the standard abilities of Italian artisans with the contemporary concepts of latest artists, designers and curators.
Artemest Galleria, which opened earlier this month at 518 West nineteenth Avenue, is the primary bodily gallery and showroom from Artemest, a high-end interiors and way of life web site.
The positioning, which launched in 2015, connects greater than 1,400 Italian artisans with a global viewers of designers, architects and personal shoppers who’re searching for luxurious furnishings and handmade gadgets starting from one thing as small as a marble cake stand as much as leather-based sofas and Murano glass chandeliers.
The brand new, 5,000-square-foot, multipurpose area features as an artwork gallery, with exhibitions altering each three months; an occasions area, and an workplace the place architects, inside designers and different shoppers can plan initiatives and supply residence decor, furnishings and lighting.
Artemest Galleria is at the moment internet hosting a present referred to as “Blow,” meant to spotlight the abilities and craftsmanship of Murano glassblowers as seen by means of the eyes of the Caribbean-born artist Bradley Theodore.
The area is crammed with Theodore’s giant and small-scale works, which have a Pop Artwork really feel — and look nothing like anybody’s thought of a standard Murano glass chandelier. There are large pineapple and palm installations, a colourful glass sculpture of Frida Kahlo and skull-adorned mirrors hanging on a backdrop coated in hand-painted wallpaper.
Theodore’s works have been created by the Italian glassblowers Ongaro e Fuga; Fratelli Tosi; Luci Italia; Specchi Veneziani; Multiforme; Venice Manufacturing facility, and Covi e Puccioni.
“Blow,” first offered in June on the Salone del Cell in Milan, demonstrates simply how completely different Artemest is from different furnishings and interiors showrooms.
Artemest Galleria, and the exhibitions it plans to host, are the cofounders’ means of telling the world that conventional craft isn’t lifeless, dying or dusty and that thousands and thousands of Italian artisans proceed to make use of centuries-old abilities to make on a regular basis objects.
“The entire level is to reinvigorate the world of craft with out dumbing it down,” says Ippolita Rostagno, the cofounder and artistic director of Artemest.
“We are attempting to get folks’s notion of craft out of the dusty closet, forged a brand new mild on it, and present what being up to date actually means. Craft isn’t solely tied to custom, or to a selected kind of previous world, maker tradition. It will also be reinvigorated with the affect of artists, designers and individuals who historically haven’t had entry to this unimaginable wealth of expertise and design,” she provides.
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Artemest Galleria plans to faucet a distinct artist, curator or maker each three months who will align with completely different artisans and create new work for a collection of exhibitions.
The New York-based Rostagno, a high-quality jewellery designer who grew up exterior Florence and studied sculpture within the Italian metropolis, is passionate concerning the nation’s conventional crafts.
Rostagno was initially going to name the web site Italy.com, so keen was she to advertise the nation’s artisans who have been having bother surviving in a fast-moving digital world.
“This complete journey began as a ardour undertaking for me. I may see all of those artisans closing their companies and I used to be so disturbed by this reality as a result of I knew the purchasers have been on the market,” Rostagno says.
She teamed with cofounder Marco Credendino, who had labored on the company and technique aspect of Yoox Internet-a-porter Group. Their goal has been to combination Italian crafts-based companies on a single, curated platform and current them to the remainder of the world.
Artemest goals to do for Italian artisans what Farfetch has carried out for small, multibrand retailers, taking good care of worldwide advertising and providing a gross sales platform, in addition to digital and shopper providers.
Italy is estimated to have greater than 1.3 million small arts and crafts firms, a lot of them mom-and-pop companies, that make use of greater than 3 million folks. In accordance with Rostagno and Credendino, many of those companies have been left behind by the web increase.
To start with, when Credendino was establishing the know-how and the logistics aspect of the enterprise, Rostagno was “going round Italy on trains searching for all of the little artisans in nooks and crannies. I used to be telling them, ‘There’s going to be an internet site, and we’re going to promote your lovely issues.’ And a few of them checked out me like I had two heads,” she says.
Artemest sells throughout classes together with residence and residing, decor, artwork and furnishings. The extremely curated website has its personal journal, with articles and profiles of the artisans, inside design options and luxurious editorial-style shoots.
Opening Artemest Galleria was the subsequent step within the journey, a strategy to cater to the present group and promote the Italian artisans to a brand new viewers.
Credendino says opening Artemest Galleria was essential to the event of the model because it permits the enterprise to “inform many alternative tales, interact and reengage with shoppers” and construct a like-minded group that’s obsessed with, and supportive of, high-end craftsmanship.
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“E-commerce is all the time going to be our core however in markets the place we have already got a robust shopper base we wish to be in the neighborhood. We wish to construct bodily areas the place we are able to meet our clients and invite them to see new collections,” he says.
Rostagno provides that New York was a pure place to open the primary Artemest Galleria as a result of “it’s the mecca of all design corporations. The architects and inside designers are primarily based right here and the U.S. is our first market, so it made sense to have a bodily area the place we are able to actually meet with our group.”
The brand new area is situated on the bottom flooring of a constructing designed by Annabelle Selldorf of Selldorf Architects. It’s situated throughout from David Zwirner Gallery.
Rostagno says she and Credendino most popular the downtown arty neighborhood to New York’s furnishings district as a result of they wished to give attention to the intersection of artwork and craft slightly than pitching themselves as one other furnishings and interiors retailer.
The brand new area additionally has a backyard, the place Artemest plans to host occasions and showcase out of doors furnishings beginning subsequent spring. Along with the backyard and the gallery, there’s a undertaking room, a pattern room and an workplace area for conferences.
Going ahead, there might be a workshop area for architects, inside designers and personal shoppers to work on residential and industrial initiatives and preview finishes, materials and supplies.
Credendino provides that New York is just the start. The enterprise companions plan to open three extra showrooms within the subsequent three years, probably on the West Coast of the U.S. and within the Center East.
Their final aim is to broaden past Italy, faucet artisans and craftspeople worldwide and assist them to market and promote their designs utilizing Artemest’s know-how, providers and logistics.
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