The Art Institute of Chicago will display the furniture and product designs of Konstantin Grcic in the first major exhibition of his work in a U.S. museum.
“Konstantin Grcic: Decisive Design,” on view in the Abbott Galleries of the Modern Wing, is specifically devoted to the portfolio of Grcic and his firm, Konstantin Grcic Insdustrial Design (KGID), and brings together more than 100 of his objects, including furniture, products, tableware, and office accessories. Grcic is known for his logical designs, driven by an honesty of materials and an appropriateness of production methods. His diverse output re-examines how an object should look, function, and what its inherent relationship to the user should be. The works featured at the Art Institute, while spanning his career, are united by his foundational principles of simplicity, irony, and subtle humor.
"The Art Institute opened the Modern Wing with a renewed commitment to showcase the work of designers who are at the forefront of progressive thinking and practice in the field of design," said Zoë Ryan, Neville Bryan Curator of Design at the Art Institute and curator of the exhibition.
"In this regard, there is no better inaugural design exhibition than the work of Konstantin Grcic. Equally attentive to form and function, Grcic's inventive projects offer insightful and intelligent commentaries on the history and nature of design itself and the ways in which we interact with everyday objects."
The exhibition includes objects that are readily available to consumers as well as experiments that push the constraints of industrial production. Highlights include the Myto chair, designed for Plank, a cantilevered chair named after the Mito sports motorbike made by Cagiva, whose low-slung thrust was made possible by using an advanced plastic polymer; the 360° chair designed for Magis, whose quirky form rethinks conventional office chairs; and the Mayday lamp, perhaps Grcic's best known work, produced for Flos, which reinterprets the industrial lamps used in auto mechanic shops for a domestic setting.
The Mayday lamp won the prestigious Compasso d'Oro award at the Milan furniture fair in 2001 and the Myto chair won a Brit Insurance Design Award for Furniture from the Design Museum in London in 2009. Reflecting Grcic's adherence to industrial production, the Mayday lamp is widely accessible and is available in the Art Institute's Modern Shop.
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