(smow) blog compact: Marcel Wanders – Pinned Up at the Stedelijk, 25 years of design

By way of an addendum to our “5 New Design Exhibitions for February 2014” post…. The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is currently showing “Pinned Up at the Stedelijk, 25 years of design”, the first major retrospective of the work of Dutch designer Marcel Wanders.

Presenting over 400 objects the exhibition promises to cover Marcel Wanders’ complete career since the release of the Set Up Shades lamp in 1989 and in doing so present a chance to better understand the man, his thinking and his works.

In addition to established Wanders’ classics such as the Egg Vase, Lace Table, New Antiques furniture collection and of course his “breakthrough” Knotted Chair from 1996, the exhibition will also present newer works, including the first public viewing of “The Virtual Interiors”, a series of seven fantasy interiors developed by Wanders and presented as digital films.

All we can say is, having witnessed the sensually unbearable Moooi exhibition at Milan 2013, we can’t wait to experience how seven Marcel Wanders’ fantasy landscapes mess with our minds.

In addition to Marcel Wanders’ own work a section of the exhibition has been given over to an exploration of his role as Art Director of Moooi, a company which he of course co-founded and which for us is probably the most interesting aspect of Marcel Wanders’ output. Representing as it does decisions about what good contemporary design is rather than a product formed in cooperation with a producer who invariably has their own manifesto and criteria.

Since his early days as one of those young designers who helped free “Dutch Design” from the shackles of blue and white pottery, bicycles and Gerrit T. Rietveld, Marcel Wanders has been an important figure, not least through his role with and within design collective droog. And while, for us, his work over the years has lost some of the panache and uncontrolled grace of his early projects he remains a talent you can’t ignore. Or at least one who you’d be foolish to ignore.

In that sense, Marcel Wanders – Pinned Up at the Stedelijk, 25 years of design certainly sounds like an exhibition worth viewing should you be in Amsterdam.

Marcel Wanders – Pinned Up at the Stedelijk, 25 years of design runs at the Stedelijk Museum, Museumplein 10, 1071 DJ Amsterdam until Sunday June 15th 2014.

Full details can be found at http://stedelijk.nl

Marcel Wanders - Pinned Up at the Stedelijk, 25 years of design