Exhibition Detail

Mark Dineen Drip Vase #1, Plastic, boiled leather, opalescent film, 22k gold leaf. Photo courtesy of the artist

Cranbrook: A New Domestic Landscape

May 12, 2017 - January 14, 2018
Lower Level Galleries

Cranbrook: A New Domestic Landscape examines the role of designed objects that define and animate our interior environments. The exhibition features contemporary furniture and furnishings by recent alumni and Artists-in-Residence of Cranbrook Academy of Art that challenge conventions of use, explore new materials and techniques, and blur the boundaries between art, craft, and design.

Long a hotbed of experimental design, Cranbrook has played an important role in envisioning artifacts for living—from the handcrafted production of the Arts and Crafts period and the birth of mid-century modernism in America to the art furniture movement of the 1980s. Today, this progressive approach continues with artists, architects, and designers who expand these legacies of handcrafted production, custom fabrication, and experiments in form, materials, and processes in their own unique ways.

The exhibition takes its title from the landmark 1972 exhibition, Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, curated by Emilio Ambasz for the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Just as Ambasz had argued for a heterogeneous approach to design that challenged its modern orthodoxy of “form follows function,” contemporary producers continue many of its avant-garde experiments, but with a renewed sense of material experimentation and a continued contestation of an object’s symbolic meaning, ritual use, and functional constraints.

The exhibition features work from:

Vivian Beer (Metalsmithing ’04)
Aaron Blendowski (3D Design ’06)
Nina Cho (3D Design ’15)
Jack Craig (3D Design ’12)
Mark Dineen (3D Design ’13)
Brian DuBois (3D Design ’11)
Sharan Elran (Ceramics ’12)
Evan Fay (3D Design ’16)
Kristina Gerig Hunter (3D Design ’11)
Ross Hansen (3D Design ’11)
Ania Jaworska (Architecture ’09)
Doug Johnston (Architecture ’07)
Seth Keller (3D Design ’11)
Scott Klinker (3D Design ’96, and current 3D Design Artist-in-Residence)
Mark Moskovitz (3D Design ’05)
Jonathan Muecke (3D Design ’10)
Michael Neville (3D Design ’14)
Jay Sae Jung Oh (3D Design ’11)
Begüm Cana Özgür (3D Design ’13)
Anders Ruhwald (Current Ceramics Artist-In-Residence)
Christopher Schanck (3D Design ’11)
Reed Wilson (3D Design ’11) & Lilian Crum (2D Design ’12)
Zero Craft Corp. with Ebitenyefa Baralaye (Ceramics ’16)

 

Cranbrook: A New Domestic Landscape is made possible with generous support from the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation. The exhibition was organized by Cranbrook Art Museum; curated by Andrew Blauvelt, Director of Cranbrook Art Museum, and Steffi Duarte, Jeanne and Ralph Graham Collections Fellow; and designed by Mark Baker (3D Design ’11).