JUNGLE by Khaled El Mays

At Salone Del Mobile 2021, designer Khaled El Mays transformed the Caveau at Nilufar Gallery into a conceptual jungle dotted with an array of objects celebrating contemporary craft culture. The collection tackles design and nature on many levels: starting from the conceptual nucleus to the production line and finally, the on-site and online presentations, where real and imagined landscapes are juxtaposed in a bid to recreate nature’s magic.

Balanced, tactile, functional and yet ethereal, each object in El Mays’s ‘Jungle’ collection tells its own story, and still, easily fits into the larger narrative. Each object takes on a character: we have the elephant, the snake, the flowers and the mountain. All pieces are hand-made and hand-handled, asserting the designer’s commitment to craft and craft communities.

GIARDINO DELL’EDEN
Site specific installation by Federica Perazzoli

With great visual impact, the ‘Jungle’ installation proposes an immersive experience in nature, evoked by the wallpaper and curtains enveloping El Mays’s creations. On the walls, the personal pictorial studies of Swiss artist Federica Perazzoli are depicted, who has long centered her studies around the forces linking humanity and nature.

‘Giardino dell’Eden’ is a constant search for empathy between man and nature; a cozy space where visitors can linger to perceive their being in the world and free their minds through meditation until they lose touch with physical reality. In her Garden of Eden, the artist continues her personal pictorial research, which has always revolved around investigating the forces that connect humanity with nature, projecting the complex universe of her canvases onto the surfaces of home décor pieces.

Odyssey by Andrés Reisinger

In 2021, Andrés Reisinger captured the attention of the design world with ‘The Shipping,’ a collection of born-digital furniture that announced the arrival of a new mode of practice. With his new presentation at Nilufar Gallery organized inside the Palcoscenico of the Depot as part of Salone Del Mobile, entitled ‘Odyssey’ – an allusion back to the historical origins of epic narrative – he extended his reach further still, offering a beguiling and complex interplay of virtual and physical experience.

Three furniture works appear in the exhibition, both in the guise of fabricated objects and as the charismatic subjects of accompanying films. These seem to document other worlds, suggestively free of attachment to any partícular time and space. The overall effect is to plunge the visitor into a futuristic realm, staging an encounter with new narrative possibilities for design. Immediately compelling as a visual, immersive experience, Reisinger’s work also operates at other levels, sensitively exploring the emotional terrain and theoretical implications of digital-led design and the unexpected connection between the digital world and the real world through the ground-breaking combination of furnishings and NFTs.

FAR 2019

Commissioned to Studio Vedèt by Nina Yashar with exhibition design by Space Caviar, FAR is a voyage into a galaxy of emergent designers. It embraces the work of individuals who often operate as collectives forming, dissolving, regrouping and ungrouping fluidly with an open end. It is a temporary collective of collectives, so to speak, that captures a snapshot of a new generation, subliminally echoing the radical experiments of a previous generation that understood design as a language capable of transcending the basic logic of consumption in order to operate, instead, on the level of political thought.

In the uncanny and somewhat bewildering universe of FAR, projects converge that share an obsession with membranes, films, coatings and epidermises, or with forms developed through processes of almost geological stratification and layering, of which the purpose is intentionally left unclear. Whether they are redesigning and printed everyday objects in velvety 3D polymers, or rethinking the materiality of skin starting from silicone and shoelaces, or pushing car body painting techniques to the extreme, these designers’ experiments openly challenge the notion of function, stubbornly focusing instead on deploying materials and techniques that have often never been tried before to breed a new generation of palpitating, amorphous beings capable of signifying and communicating in a very direct, visceral way.

FAR 2019 featured designs from Odd Matter, Michael Schoner, Audrey Large, Alberto Vitelio, Thomas Ballouhey, Johan Viladrich, Julien Manaira, Linde Freya, Bram Vanderbeke and Wendy Andreu.

Matacubi by Pietro Consagra

‘Matacubi’ introduced the public for the first time to a unique series of sculptural works of great current relevance by Pietro Consagra (1920-2005). Nine ‘Matacubi’ – functional object-sculptures created from 1985 onwards by Consagra, one of the most prestigious exponents of international abstractionism – showed in the large atrium of Nilufar Depot.

The exhibition, curated together with Luca Massimo Barbero, started with a visit to the Archivio Pietro Consagra during which Yashar was particularly struck by the Matacubi. Organized in collaboration with the Archivio Pietro Consagra, with a display installation by Ruggero Moncada di Paternò, ‘Matacubi’ illustrates a series of works with rounded, sensual forms that unfold in a way that invites two or three people to sit down, creating a direct and immediate playful interaction with the viewer.

Chez Nina Ep. II

‘Chez Nina,’ the private club created by the architect and designer India Mahdavi as a celebration of complicity with Yashar, returned for “Episode II” with new lighting projects by Vibeke Fonnesberg Schmidt.

For the club chandelier in plexiglass and brass, the Danish designer created elegant, pop-style compositions where geometries and pure color stand side by side, with fascinating semi-transparent lighting effects: a series of 8 creations that illuminate and reveal the space of the club, giving it a new personality.

It’s all about Colour by Studio Nucleo
+ Site-Specific Installation by Federica Perazzoli

On the occasion of Design City 2020, Yashar presented ‘It’s All About Colour,’ an exhibition entirely dedicated to Studio Nucleo, a Turin-based collective of designers and artists led by Piergiorgio Robino, celebrating its 10 years of collaboration with Nilufar Gallery. ‘It’s All About Colour’ worked as an ‘in fieri’ (in progress) exhibition, in which pieces arrived at the gallery monthly from six Studio Nucleo projects selected by Yashar and displayed in Nilufar’s via della Spiga and via Senato spaces.

At via Senato, the pieces by Studio Nucleo met the dreamlike universe created by artist Federica Perazzoli, whose wallpapers and large canvases create a hyper-decorative atmosphere. Besides being entrusted with the development of the space, Perazzoli also presented ‘Each Time You Fall in Love,’ a painting made exclusively for Nilufar Gallery.

SUN-RA Collection by Nanda Vigo

Produced in 33 limited edition pieces and exclusively available at Nilufar, the ‘SUN–RA’ lamp collection, designed by the late Nanda Vigo, is characterized by a hybrid identity that is poised between art and design. They are the perfect synthesis of Vigo’s career, which revolved around the search for the interference between space and light; the design is no longer just an object but turns into artwork in which light becomes the joint element of the whole composition and declares at the same time the function of the object itself.

Chez Nina Ep. I

Named after Yashar, ‘Chez Nina’ is a private club designed by architect and designer India Mahdavi as a celebration of Nina’s great passion for India. Sophisticated velvet benches and two-tone glass coffee tables were especially designed for the space – harmoniously contrasting with the geometric silk wall created by celebrated French wallpaper manufacturer de Gournay – while an exclusive assortment of lamps and furniture from Yashar’s collection added a touch of elegance to the intimate atmosphere where rigorous geometries met feminine, sinuous shapes.

Lina Bo Bardi – Giancarlo Palanti Studio D’Arte Palma 1948–1951

Presented during Milano Design Week 2018, ‘Lina Bo Bardi – Giancarlo Palanti Studio d’Arte Palma 1948-1951’ paid tribute to the Italo-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi focusing on the furniture from the Studio d’Arte Palma, which she founded together with Italian architect Giancarlo Palanti. The show, produced by Nilufar Gallery in collaboration with the Instituto Bardi / Casa de Vidro, was the result of extensive research on Lina Bo Bardi and her activity as designer of furniture, an often overlooked aspect of her work.

The exhibition presented the largest collection of Bo Bardi’s furniture pieces ever brought together and investigates the forgotten work of Giancarlo Palanti. Many of the pieces displayed, mostly chairs and armchairs, are rare objects originating in Brazil. The unique combination of iconic and everyday in her furniture, each piece built for a specific purpose, is a powerful expression of Lina Bo Bardi’s generous and all-encompassing philosophy of design. Over the years, Yashar acquired an example of almost every piece ever designed by Bo Bardi, and she considered this exhibition the most important of her four-decade career as a gallerist.

Arcoiris by Analogia Project

The work of Italian designer Andrea Mancuso strikes a fine balance between the fantastical and the everyday. His Analogia Project, a research-based design studio that creates objects, furniture and installations, is characterised by a narrative-driven approach, challenging the perception of space while foregrounding deep historical investigation and a creative interpretation of materials. ‘Arcoiris,’ the new project by Analogia Project for Nilufar, is a physical experiment, a fascinating interplay of light and stone, composed of a series of artfully made designs.

The collection features floor and table lamps, pendant and wall lights, and a large coffee table, all entirely made from marble beams of different forms, curvatures and types (White Carrara, Verde Alpi, Giallo Reale and Rosso Alicante marble). Each and every element of this lighting piece was designed to conceal the light source, so as to create an ethereal effect of bright colors that are lit from the inside.

NBrassless at Alcova – Milan Design Week 2021

The collective show ‘Brassless,’ part of the FAR program curated by Studio Vedèt, was initially presented at Nilufar Depot in 2020 and now features a selection of unique pieces by international designers including Objects of Common Interest, Simon Ballen, Odd Matter, Older, and Carlo Lorenzetti, among others.

The show, hosted in the frame of the design platform Alcova during the Milan Design Week 2021, was an attempt to move away from the industry’s preoccupation with brass to instead investigate the use of other metals. Designers taking part used steel, copper, gold, lead, aluminium, nickel, bronze and silver for their projects.

GLADSTONE 64 – Lina Bo Bardi / Giancarlo Palanti

This exhibition of rare and seminal designs by Italo-Brazilian artist Lina Bo Bardi in collaboration with Giancarlo Palanti, accompanied by a selection of important works by artists from the radical Brazilian collective, Grupo Frente, was realized in close collaboration between Gladstone Gallery, Nilufar Gallery, and the Instituto Bardi / Casa de Vidro.

Best known for her prolific career as an architect and designer, Bo Bardi’s work represents the creative and social modernity throughout Mid-Century Brazil, an era characterized by cultural and artistic experimentation, and this exhibition demonstrates her important place in history.

Alongside this exhibition was a carefully considered selection of work from some of Brazil’s most significant modernist artists who worked concurrent to Bo Bardi and Palanti, many of whom belonged to Grupo Frente, including Hercules Barsotti, Sergio Camargo, Aluisio Carvão, Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Pape, Mira Schendel, and Ivan Serpa.

Lina Bo Bardi – Palanti at Design Museum Gent

As an architect, designer, scenographer, editor, writer and illustrator, Lina Bo Bardi was a woman of almost unlimited talent whose vision of design was in equal measures generous and uncompromising.

Integrating architecture with the design of furniture, interiors, and often curating the programme of her public buildings, Bo Bardi aimed at producing common meanings and creating a bond between people and space. She pursued such ambition by mastering craft and fabrication processes in order to make apparent the natural and local qualities of the materials and cultures she worked with. Collaborations with people from diverse fields of interest were crucial to construct an extensive and shared body of knowledge. This is the case of Italian architect Giancarlo Palanti, with whom she founded the Estúdio de Arte e Arquitetura Palma in 1948, which designed and produced several furniture pieces.

Focusing especially on the work realised within the Estúdio Palma, this exhibition produced by Nilufar Gallery, presents the largest collection of Lina’s furniture ever brought together. Many of the pieces displayed, mostly chairs and armchairs, are rare objects originating in Brazil.

Nilufar Depot

In 2015, in a building that once housed a silverware factory, Yashar opened Nilufar Depot – a small, living museum, where Yashar selects historical and contemporary pieces. The wide space, arranged over three levels with a layout inspired by the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, has since seated part of Yashar’s extensive design collection, in an atmosphere allowing contemporary design to find a harmonious connection with iconic pieces of historical design.

Yashar partnered with architect Massimiliano Locatelli to create the space, characterized by imposing metallic structures to give a framework and regularity to the gallerist’s very peculiar and eclectic aesthetic sense. Different from the ordinary Gallery setting, Nilufar Depot aims at being a space for experimentations and original encounters, a hotspot for Milan’s fervent and dynamic design scenes, where Yashar’s peculiar curatorial view meets and merges with emerging talents, historical icons and the city itself.

Nomad St. Moritz 2019

In 2019, The second edition of art and design fair Nomad St. Moritz returned to Chesa Planta, the prestigious mansion in the heart of the Swiss Alps with a unique collection of contemporary design and modern art pieces. Warming up the vibe of charmingly snowy St. Moritz, Yashar proposed an exploration of the work by Milanese designer Osanna Visconti di Modrone.

Osanna’s expertise lies in conveying unique character to bronze castings; her creations naturally develop into a great variety of formal elements, textures and hand-made patterns. Yashar’s flair for blending the unexpected sees such rich conversation through a tribal lens, which becomes the main leitmotif as the whole selection of pieces is enhanced by the all-over screenwork of newly commissioned luxury fabrics by Tibor UK.

TEFAF New York / Spring 2019

Nilufar returned to TEFAF New York in the prestigious frame of one of the historic rooms of the Park Avenue Armory. The gallery presented a refined selection of vintage and contemporary pieces standing out for a vivid color palette, in a multifaceted and joyful encounter between different aesthetics and historical periods, with an exclusive partnership with Dedar for the precious fabric upholstery which becomes the fil rouge across Nilufar’s selection of furniture.

The joyful and somehow displacing encounter between historical Brazilian furniture by Joaquim Tenreiro and the iconic lighting from the Fontana Amorosa collection by Michael Anastassiades interprets and re-contextualises a successful story that Nina Yashar had started exploring in 2017 at Nilufar Gallery. Inspired by such florid conversation, Yashar expands its impactful potential by featuring in the scene a refined selection of pieces.

Nina Chez Valentino

A creative dialogue between Yashar and creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli for Milano Design Week, Valentino presented ‘Nina Chez Valentino,’ a selection of apparel and accessories displayed together with objects from the Nilufar collection in a dialogue between the creations of the Valentino Fall 2018 Collection and the furnishing accessories from the collections of Nilufar Gallery.

Inside the Valentino boutique in Milan during Salone del Mobile 2018, Yashar and Piccioli orchestrated an imaginary and personal dialogue by combining creative forms, symbols and visions in five rooms to investigate the identity of the past, the great aesthetic tradition of Valentino, and the great masters of design; combining forms, symbols and creative visions to convey the meaning of the contemporary world.

Brassless – FAR 2020

FAR, Nilufar’s parallel curatorial program living within the spaces of the gallery, has taken possession of the spaces of the Caveau at Nilufar Depot with the collective show ‘Brassless.’ The show is a provocative yet light gesture which strikes an irreverent and playful attitude in response to a trend that has popped up everywhere in product and interior design, in companies and galleries — including Nilufar itself — in recent years.

‘Brassless’ comments on the use (or abuse) of this metal, most popularly in the form of surface-layer sheets that cover everything (and nothing in particular) in contemporary design, with little regard for the unique properties of brass. The show celebrates the return of material potentiality and meaning as urgent design topics, showing 13 projects (in different metals and 1 non-metal) that investigate physical and visual qualities of matter — exploring forms and avoiding uniformity.

100 CHAIRS IN 100 DAYS by Martino Gamper

In ‘100 Chairs in 100 Days,’ Gamper, known for his crossovers between fine art and design, reconfigured the design of 100 seats which were retrieved over a period of two years through his adventures of rummaging through garbage, picking up rejected and deserted chairs, then spending 100 days reconfiguring the design of each one in an attempt to transform its character and/or the way it functions. The result is a collage of design history, his intentions being to convert the character and features of the chairs as a means to investigate the potential merger of several stylistic and structural elements.

Though the design approach of each piece may seem spontaneous, each chair is characterized by a deep knowledge of design history, as was seen by his subsequent performance in which he has disassembled and reassembled original furniture designed by Gio Ponti in 1960, giving birth to new objects exhibited in his stanze e camere (room) installations.

Green Boxes

For the second chapter of the ‘Nilufar Colors’ series, Yashar chose to continue her journey through colors by investigating the role of green. Frivolous, toxic, dangerous, ill-fated…as one of the most controversial colors, green was rarely used amongst painters at the turn of 19th and 20th centuries. While Piet Mondrian considered it worthless, green and its shades were almost always missing in design objects, decoration and furniture from the post-war period.

Countertrending this historical suppression, Nilufar presented a selection of works exalting the power of this peculiar shade. From the timeless elegance of Joaquim Tenreiro’s armchairs to Gino Sarfatti’s 584/G table lamp, green creates the space for more contemporary creative flairs, including the works, amongst others, of Odd Matter, Caturegli Formica and Bethan Laura Wood.

Blue Boxes

Curated by Yashar, the series ‘Nilufar Colors’ started from a color that almost did not exist. Despite being so present in nature, blue was completely absent in the Ancient World and had been the least popular shade for centuries, deemed as immoral and seen as too difficult to be mastered and reproduced. Everything changed in 1709, when J.J. Diesbach and J.C. Dippel synthesized, almost by chance, the pigment we all know as “Prussian blue”.

In this first chapter, ‘Nilufar Colors’ explored blue through a curated mix of vintage and contemporary furniture, able to exalt the intensity of all its shades and its natural instinct to converse with any given space. An antique carpet from Tibet, Audrey Large’s 3D printed in PLA experiments and B.B.P.R.’s timeless sofa all become the protagonists of this modern and unconventional story.

SQUAT

An ongoing project that takes place in different locations and platforms and plays with diverse cultural, geographical, and architectural environments, Yashar’s ‘SQUAT’ explores a new concept of the exhibition.

Started in 2012, ‘SQUAT’ is an interdisciplinary concept that merges design, architecture, and art, taking place in different locations and platforms. The ongoing project, which has popped up in Paris, Beirut, Milan, London, New York, and Los Angeles, explores distinct geographical environments and the diverse cultures that accompany them.

Christie’s

In 2020, Yashar collaborated with Christie’s Italia to mount a high-profile sale of carefully chosen examples of furniture, lighting, textiles and objects selected from her gallery for an inaugural online-only sale, also marking the gallery’s first 40th anniversary and the 50th anniversary of the first live auction held in the country by the auction house.

‘Nilufar [100] Design Selections’ represented a unique opportunity both for collectors and design enthusiasts to acquire vintage and contemporary furniture and objects, antique rugs and lamps. In line with the gallery’s new stylistic choices, particularly attentive to contemporary and experimental design, Yashar selected unique and historical pieces that are testimony to Nilufar’s flair for mid-century international design.

Design Miami/Basel – 2017

A very rare collection of furnishings designed by BBPR – the group of Italian architects formed in 1932 by Gian Luigi Banfi (1910-1945), Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso (1909-2004), Enrico Peressutti (1908-1976), and Ernesto Nathan Rogers (1909-1969) – became the core feature of the setting of Nilufar for Design Miami/Basel.

Most of the pieces came from a private apartment in Milan on which the architects worked from 1950-51 to 1966. These furnishings stand out for their rationalist rigour, expressed through sophisticated forms and refined harmony. They include a precious console table from the 1950s with a structure in cast brass and walnut plywood, and a top in Verde Alpi marble.

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