Furniture gets performative at Collectible design fair – The Art Newspaper

Collectible design fair celebrates its sophomore year in New York by taking over the entire 39th floor of the WSA building in Manhattan’s Financial District. While the 123 exhibitors—many of them New York-based—were putting final touches on their stands in the hours before the VIPs arrived on Wednesday morning (3 September), those lucky enough to be placed adjacent to the windows admired the stunning views of the East River and Brooklyn beyond.

“I’ll never get bored of this view,” says Satu Greenberg of Tuleste Factory, whose stand is by a window overlooking the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. Greenberg runs the design gallery in Tribeca with her sister Celeste. They have populated their stand with custom pieces by 15 artists and studios from New York, the Netherlands, Turkey and elsewhere—many of whom they met at previous fairs, Greenberg tells The Art Newspaper. The lighting-heavy stand is dubbed Afterglow, and it includes a couple striking ceramic lamps by the Brooklyn-based designer Ethan Streicher of Streicher Goods.

Streicher himself mans a stand in the opposite corner of the fair in collaboration with the Long Island-based woodworker Ian Love. Streicher and Love have created what appears to be a full living-room set, complete with a bench, a floor lamp and a couple tables and chairs. Each object, aside from the mirror, is made using both Love’s woodworking and Streicher’s ceramics. Streicher says that the pair have only been working together for a year—they met through a public-relations agent who thought they would get along.

“The first thing we made together was the bench,” Streicher says. “But everyone likes the lamp. It makes us want to do more lighting pieces.” He adds that they would be thrilled if someone were willing to buy their setup, which they call the Kindred Collection, as a complete set.

Liv Vaisberg, a co-founder of Collectible, says that the overall goal is to present a “curated and designer-centred fair” that fosters collaboration and exchange. “I discovered design quite recently, about ten years ago,” says Vaisberg, who was previously the director of Independent Brussels. “So this is more of an art setting. All of the objects are limited editions of 12 or less, and most are unique pieces.” She adds that this year’s fair is more experimental, not because it was planned that way, but thanks to the creativity of its exhibitors.

“People are creating their own worlds,” Vaisberg says, highlighting stands that have incorporated drag, a piercing station and a table dinner.

The dinner and piercing station are right next to each other in the fair’s special-projects section. The performance Distant Family Dinner took place last night (3 September), with visitors invited to eat at a table created with design elements by two dozen artists while tasting an 11-course meal by the New York-based chef Marissa Lippert.

Right behind the large dinner table is a collaboration between Studio S II and Bond Hardware titled Weaving Sensations. The two Brooklyn-based studios have brought together a variety of objects made from an innovative and extremely strong netting design with an ambient soundtrack played on suspended speakers inspired by body modification as well as jewellery.

Visitors can sit in a net chair and listen to the music while getting a new piercing. Bond Hardware’s Dana Hurwitz says she expects about ten to 20 people per day to get piercings. (A piercer working the stand thinks most will opt for piercing an ear, maybe a nose—probably not an eyebrow.)

On the other side of the elevator bank is the Drag Queens’ Boudoir, hosting the Finnish queens Karjalan Piirakka and Sanelma Hassutpallot. Karjalan Piirakka is the drag persona of the furniture designer Henri Judin, and Sanelma Hassutpallot is that of his supportive husband. “Design is often boring and masculine,” Judin says, “so I thought: Why not bring together my two great passions of furniture design and drag?”

Judin took his drag name from a traditional Finnish pastry that is suggestively elongated and folded. The savoury pastry appears in the form of wall sculptures at the stand, and as Karjalan Piirakka’s earrings, whose entire outfit is neon yellow.

“You don’t see neon yellow much in design,” Judin says. “But it’s so vibrant and has always fascinated me.” The colour also appears in his furniture, which includes a large cabinet, a unique coffee table and a bench—all made of wood.

• Collectible, until 7 September, Water Street Projects WSA, 180 Maiden Lane, New York