Marc Newson

I’m always looking for processes and techniques that are completely anachronistic. I love recontextualizing these things in a modern time.
—Marc Newson

Gagosian is pleased to present new works by designer Marc Newson. This is Newson’s first exhibition of limited-edition furniture in China.

From the outset of his singular career, Newson has pursued parallel activities in limited and mass production of functional design objects. With inspirations ranging from popular culture to traditional crafts from around the world, he approaches design as both an exploratory technical exercise and a process of conceptual, aesthetic, and physical refinement. Employing sculptural principles to address issues of efficiency, luxury, and use value, Newson has produced a broad array of highly crafted objects—watches, footwear, luggage, furniture, transport—upholding the principle that engineering and aesthetics are inseparable.

Revisiting his roots as a jeweler and silversmith, in this exhibition Newson explores increasingly rare decorative processes at an unconventionally large, even unprecedented, scale. He has long been drawn to the streamlined, simple beauty of Asian art and design: from his Aikuchi swords made in the renowned Tōhoku region of Japan to, most recently, his furniture created using the ancient technique of Chinese cloisonné—an enameling technique that originated in the eastern Mediterranean more than three thousand years ago and spread to China around the fourteenth century.