Also featuring works by Maarten Baas and Studio Makkink & Bey
Shanghai—Pearl Lam Design, in collaboration with Art Project CZ, is pleased to introduce Life, an exhibition of new and past works by Shanghai-based designer Danful Yang, which will be complemented by small objects by celebrated Dutch designers Maarten Baas and Studio Makkink & Bey, at Le Petit Cochon Vert, a French-style restaurant in Shanghai’s former French quarter. The exhibition features common objects used in daily life remade in unexpected ways in an effort to shift our everyday perspectives, and works that try to make us see the lighter side of life through their playful qualities.
Art Project CZ was established by Zhou Chong, a young Shanghainese art collector. The Project places art pieces in public areas to create a connection between art and society, as well as promote emerging artists. The Project, whose predecessor is Macasa Art Project, organises exhibitions and installations five times a year, each time working with outstanding contemporary Chinese art galleries. Art Project CZ has already collaborated with Shanghai Gallery of Art and ANTENNA space, among others.
A highlight of the exhibition is young Chinese designer Danful Yang’s new site-specific installation, Spotlight, which consists of threads radiating from the ceiling to the floor at various angles. The large-scale installation “spotlights” invisible threads that surround us: from the Internet to rays of light. It aims to show the hidden parts of our lives that make up our real life experience, not the self-built, cleaned up online images we create in the age of social media and the cult of celebrity. Yang was inspired by the natural light from the venue’s windows, which creates mesmerising patterns of sunlight on the walls and surfaces. The threads, which traverse the room, resemble rays of light, and, at the same time, refer to the concept of invisible connections that link everything in the world.
Yang will also debut her new series of embroidery works, Memories, which features items of personal significance unexpectedly remade in luxurious hand-embroidery, including notes from a friend, a business letter, and even restaurant napkins. Another new work is Yang’s installation Inside Landscape, which consists of 12 pieces of round marble, ø30 cm each, hung on the wall. Yang wants to bring nature inside, as she thinks nature makes the perfect piece.
Additionally, Yang will showcase her iconic chair, Fake, whose frame is an amalgamation of Chinese and Western Rococo styles, upholstered with fake designer handbags. The creative work is a cross-cultural bombardment of visual stimuli, turning imitation into originality and reflecting the onslaught of a globalised consumer culture.
Accompanying Danful Yang’s works will be pieces designed by Dutch designers Maarten Baas and Studio Makkink & Bey, who both travelled to China to work with Chinese craftsmen. On show are Baas’ surreal mutated wooden clothes hangers, which appear to be cloning themselves by growing out of each other, and Studio Makkink & Bey’s snuff bottles from the Studio’s Cleanliness is next to Godliness series, first created for Pearl Lam Design in 2007 (when the gallery was known as Contrasts Gallery). The glass bottles feature reverse painted images of cleaners, some even suspended by ropes, who appear to be cleaning the glass. The Studio seeks to explore the relationship of objects and the people who use them. Here, the Studio has re-imagined propaganda for the overlooked world of cleaning.
About Danful Yang
Born in 1980, young Chinese designer Danful Yang reinvents traditional Chinese art and craft techniques to create playful and visually dynamic works. Although she is not formally trained in design, she has worked closely with internationally renowned designers including Martin Szekely, André Dubreuil, Jurgen Bey, Mattia Bonetti, and Maarten Baas, as well as skilled craftsmen, who have contributed to her design education. The designer’s works have been collected by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Craig Robins (part-owner of Design Miami), and Billie Weisman (The Fredrick R. Weisman Art Foundation).
About Maarten Baas
Dutch designer Maarten Baas (b. 1978) graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven in 2002 with two designs, including his widely celebrated Smoke series, which consists of charred furniture preserved by translucent epoxy resin. Since then, Baas has created other iconic collections and pieces, including Hey, chair, be a bookshelf!, Clay Furniture, Sculpt, Plastic Chair in Wood, and Real Time, among others. Baas’ works have been collected by institutions such as the Victoria & Albert Museum, Groninger Museum, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. He regularly exhibits at the Salone del Mobile in Milan, and in galleries and museums around the world. Recent NL projects include a collaboration with the Rijksmuseum and de Bijenkorf for the launch of Room on the Roof, and a theatre set design for Matzer.
About Studio Makkink & Bey
Studio Makkink & Bey is led by architect Rianne Makkink (b. 1964) and designer Jurgen Bey (b. 1965). The studio works in various domains of applied art, including public space projects, product design, architecture, exhibition design, and applied arts. Supported by a design team, they have been operating their design practice since 2002.
The ambition of Studio Makkink & Bey is to see the role of the designer expand to the most strategic function possible. To this end, their design team includes professionals from many different fields of knowledge—forming alliances with other designers, architects and experts. The design strategy of Studio Makkink & Bey is to reappropriate what is already present in the context of an assignment, with a strong emphasis on the process. These contextual elements aren’t just rearranged within one product, but also on the scale of a building, a landscape or a social work environment.
About Pearl Lam Design
Pearl Lam has tirelessly promoted design as an art form in China. She started exhibiting and promoting decorative art and design in 1993 in Hong Kong, mounting avant-garde exhibitions, which focused on building interdisciplinary and cross-cultural dialogues. From an early stage, popular touring shows such as Awakening: La France Mandarine, the French Influence on Chinese Art (2004–2005) brought attention to the value and significance of contemporary decorative art and design in China for the first time.
Pearl Lam Design is at the forefront of contemporary design in China. The gallery invites designers from across the world to create exclusive limited edition pieces, providing a platform for designers to participate in dynamic cultural exchanges between the East and West. The majority of these designers work with Chinese craftsmen to realise their creations, many of which are driven by narrative, and push the boundaries of traditional Chinese art and craft techniques.
Pearl Lam Design aims to illustrate the absence of segregation between fine art and design in traditional Chinese culture, where decorative art assimilates into fine art, modernity merges with traditions, and traditional values are still revered.
Pearl Lam Design works with Maarten Baas, Mattia Bonetti, Reinier Bosch, Patrice Butler, André Dubreuil, Christian Ghion, Studio Makkink & Bey, Studio Swine, Martin Szekely, Peter Ting, Bouke de Vries, Philip Michael Wolfson, XYZ Design, Danful Yang, and Michael Young, among others.
