NILUFAR GALLERY – NOMAT ST MORITZ 2023

Text and images courtesy of Nilufar Gallery

Hotel Grace La Margna – Feb 23-26, 2023

Nilufar Gallery participates to Nomad St Moritz with an unusual installation enriching the interdisciplinary dialogue promoted by the fair through experimentations of various styles, techniques and materials: a medley of vintage and contemporary works alongside the gallery’s new talents’ creations. The founder of Nilufar Gallery, Nina Yashar, exhibits an environment carefully designed to dialogue with the remarkable location of the Hotel Grace La Margna framed by the snowy Alps landscape. The combination of pieces speaks of visions and expressions of contemporary living in a continuous exchange of ideas between art, design and architecture.

“Movement defines my research for talents, a value shared with the itinerant nature of Nomad. The environment we are presenting at this edition celebrates an understanding of design as an opportunity for voices and ideas from all over the world to come together.” says Yashar.

At the Nomad St Moritz fair, Nilufar Gallery creates a rare parallelism with iconic pieces of Brazilian design from the second half of the 1900s and contemporary works. Martin Eisler & Carlo Hauner’s storage cabinet, a pair of armchairs model Concha by Joaquim Tenreiro and two armchairs by Percival Lafer are juxtaposed with the hand-knotted wool rug Chromosome-P by Caturegli Formica.

The contemporary selection also features the eclectic visions of Lola Montes Schnabel, where the designer’s distinctive stylistic signature shapes numerous original pieces that define “Nurture VS Nature” Collection. Schnabel presents a series of objects that explore and analyse the home environment in every angle. In addition, the designer Carlo Lorenzetti displays four of its creations, guided by soft lines and full volumes: two bronze table lamps, the Pup stool with charging unit, and the Alter ceramic low table. The avant-garde and organic work of emerging designer Maximilian Marchesani, the latest addition to the gallery’s contemporary portfolio, illuminates the environment.

Lola Montes Schnabel – “Nurture VS Nature” Collection
Lola Montes Schnabel presents “Nurture VS Nature” Collection, a series of works where her drawing practice takes shape in a body of sculptures.

Presented by Som Santoso

In an attempt to shape the unseen, the collection revolves around the theme of metamorphosis and the flowing movements of natural elements. The colours, light, faces and overbearing nature of Sicily, where Schnabel lives and works, bring energy and impact the visual imagery of the series, intertwined with her experiences in Indonesia and Brazil. With a creative process based on the belief that the matter holds a wiser energy than the working hand, Schnabel let her hand be guided by the material in the creation of a series of works, designed for the living environment and conceived to be featured both on the inside and outside.

The extension of the collection “Le Castraure” deepens the exploration of the concept of “la castratura”: one has to castrate the first artichoke of each plant for the others to grow. The six candle holders, specifically realised for Nomad, further analyse this process as a metaphor of love, presenting the artichokes as twins, triplets and quadruplets coming from the same root. The three entirely hand-painted ceramic Angel Protection Egg lamps, inspired by Man Ray’s solarizations, are matched in a dynamic composition with the soft lines of a clover table and three paintings. A set of six stools play with the contrasting concepts of lightness and solidity, accompanied by three trays, painted ceramic tiles and accessories: salva danaro, water pitcher and bummolo malandrinò.

Carlo Lorenzetti
Carlo Lorenzetti presents a series of works where different materials, ceramic, bronze and wax, create organic shapes in a dialogue between antique knowledge and contemporary innovation.

Inspired by the ancient ceramic techniques, Lorenzetti combines this ancestral knowledge with latest technology innovation, which results in avant-garde pieces of furniture in both the materiality and appearance. Extremely resistant raw compounds are mixed with a high concentration of pre-fired and stable elements, as well as two different types of natural fiber that make it possible to achieve forms that would otherwise be impossible to create. The objects become functional sculpture and are the opportunity for a dialogue between the past ritual and the contemporary needs of living, mixing the ancient craftsmanship with techno-craft.

The Alter coffee table in ceramic is paired with the Pup stool, equipped with a charging station elegantly set between ceramic and glass. The two pieces are combined with a pair of bronze and lost wax casting table lamps, characterised by soft volumes and playing with different heights.

Maximillian Marchesani
Marchesani’s work explores how industrial processes distort the natural world to shape them into metropolitan natural ecosystems, wishing to find a new balance between the natural and the artificial.

In the piece presented ‘Famiglia’, a ceiling lamp where various materials coexist in a unique piece, the designer reflects on the passive and active contamination in contemporary environments. The work is composed of branches of Twisted Hazel (Corylus Avellana Contorta) and parrot feathers (Psittacula Krameri, also known as Ring-necked Parakeet) that Marchesani collected in a Milanese public garden; both represent terrestrial creatures that have been altered by environmental changes. The hazel is originally born with a straight stem that over time curls and knots, and was genetically modified to maintain the same curvatures. The Ring-necked Parakeet is native to the tropical and subtropical areas of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, but it was imported in Europe in the 1970s and has since been destroying the surrounding ecosystems. The branches stand for synonyms of ‘contaminated’, while the feathers for ‘contamination’.

These artistic compositions represent how Marchesani sees the world today: one in which artificial and natural cannot be disassociated.