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Dutch designer Hella Jongerius’s "Artificial Flowers" and "Animal Tables" celebrated the sculptural qualities of design in her recent show at Gallery Kreo in Paris.
Jongerius is widely regarded for the way she explores the possibilities and boundaries of both handicraft and industrial techniques and subsequently stretches them beyond the known. For instance, in many of her works she succeeds in producing uniqueness within the industrial production process through an optimal exploitation of coincidences and mistakes.
Apart from this fascination for techniques, the narrative quality of products, as always, played a major role in her work. Stories seem to hide underneath the skin of products, due to the reinterpretation of historically decorative patterns, but also due to the imaginative use of the images of flowers and animals.
While exploring the technical and narrative possibilities of designs, Jongerius never crosses the “natural” boundaries of the design field. Instead, in “Natura Design Magistra” she has taken experimental steps that celebrate the sculptural quality of her furniture and the “missing link” of her vases – flowers. A flower has become design, a table has become frog, because they were intimately engaged with the material traces of the handcrafted production process.
