Argentinian-born and US-educated Juan Garcia Mosqueda has always been at the forefront of contemporary design, right since the time he acquired a degree in Designed Objects from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After high-profile stints with A-list names in the world of design, he founded Chamber in 2013. It’s a curated art and design boutique located in Chelsea, NYC, a modern-day cabinet of curiosities or a 21st century reliquary of unusual objects and a platform for design experimentation as it calls itself. Each year, a guest designer or artist is invited to curate the gallery’s central program, bringing their unique viewpoint to Chamber through specially commissioned pieces, one of a kind works of art and rare vintage artifacts. This year, Chamber invited multi-disciplinary artist and photographer Andrew Zuckerman to curate it’s Collection#2, to be presented in three instalments, called Chapters, in fall, winter and spring. Zuckerman has curated Collection#2, in which he explores how the natural world interacts with man’s living environment. A little after the opening of the collection, Mosqueda and Zuckerman answered a few questions for BLOUIN ARTINFO to throw more light on Chamber and Collection#2.BA: Could you lead us through the process of selecting the theme as well as the curator for Chamber’s special central program each year? How did you zero in on Andrew Zuckerman to curate Chamber’s second collection?JGM: I try to find interesting people in different fields that can take Chamber’s concept and explore it to it’s fullest; people that can enrich the ethos of the company and introduce me to great works as much as I can to them. But it’s extremely important for me to see where they live and work. In both cases, when I met with Andrew and when I met with Job and Nynke, there was an indescribable connection related to a certain symbiosis between their personal work and collection of objects they surrounded themselves with.Andrew, who I happen to meet after he visited our space during last year’s winter, was chosen by me almost instantaneously. It was during my visit to his studio a few blocks up from Chamber that I felt inclined to ask him to curate the second collection. Andrew seemed like the perfect individual to deepen Chamber’s conception linked to the original great cabinet of curiosities, yet take it to the 21st century. His understanding and appreciation for nature, a central theme within Wunderkammers, is evident in both his personal work and collectables. At the same time, he is a design connoisseur and someone who was tremendously close to major figures in the design world throughout the years. Needless to say, he was perfect for the job. I try to give the curators as much freedom as I can to let their imagination go crazy at first, and then we sit down together to see what is possible and what isn’t. But it is a very intense process where both the curators and myself immerse into an extensive network of human beings creating outstanding works around the globe. Unlike the first collection, Andrew gave his collection a name and a focus. He decided to narrow his search and interests under an umbrella topic that helped him with his selection. Very smart and I am excited to see if this strategy will be applied to all collections moving forward.BA: When the well-heeled set out to buy rare items, what is it that they are looking for? Is there a certain provenance of work that they like to pick up?JGM: They don’t know because they don’t “need” anything in particular. And I think that’s the beauty of Chamber. The entire concept of the boutique was founded on the idea of being a place to find something exceptional, no matter the creative discipline or typology of object. Could be a contemporary rug, a historic ceramic decorative art piece from a centurial European manufacturer or a design product from NASA that was meant or has been used in space. The idea is to connect with the works by listening to the stories behind them and to experience them in a completely immersive, well thought context.It is very hard to define people’s unique tastes. And our variety of objects by different artists and designers address that complexity on a constant basis. Therefore, Chamber aims to be inclusive of all tastes and personalities, instead of catering to a specific group of individuals with specific aesthetic values. BA: How has the world of curated art and design transformed in all these years? Is it still relatively raw compared to commerce in pure art? JGM: Honestly, their really isn’t anything like Chamber at the moment. In a way, the rest of the commercial art and design worlds have remained attached to traditional models. So yes, it is extremely raw and there’s still a lot to innovate on. I think we have seen progress in the way people understand and collect design, mostly in the developed nations, but there’s still a lot to do in this arena. We need to focus on creating more audiovisual material, new avant garde exhibitions, give room to the intellectuals of our field to write in all our cultural outlets, have more fairs and design initiatives around the globe.BA: Given a chance, what would you pick for your personal cabinet from Human | Nature?JGM: Alexandra Kehayoglou’s “Pastizal” rug, the Maarten Baas ‘Zig Zag’ chair and Studio Job’s Bavaria Mirror. Definitely my 3 favorite pieces in the collection. However, Andrew has introduced me into the world of NASA materials, which is absolutely fascinating and look forward to including in my own personal collection.BA: Given your multi-level engagement with the natural world, how did you go about curating this collection, to bear your stamp yet be different from what you have already done before?AZ: I think I was much less concerned with putting my stamp on the collection than I was in highlighting the work of designers and artists I loved who happened to be exploring similar themes to those I explore in my own practice. Because I’m drawn to the question of how human beings relate to the natural world, I tend to surround myself with work that explores connection points between man and nature. What’s interesting to me is how uniquely each object in the collection expresses this common line. There’s a world of difference – literally, centuries – between a 19th century Cassowary Bone Knife and a Bjarke Ingels sofa, but because each reconciles something about how man interacts with the environment, they resonate similarly. Establishing a cross-section of very different objects that vibrated along that same frequency was a fascinating process and one that obviously felt very fluid in the context of my own work. BA: Many groups of people all over the world continue to be closely affiliated with nature unlike the modern city dwellers. How do you bridge the gap between the aesthetics of the former and the sensibilities of the latter who probably comprise a big chunk of buyers of curated art and design?AZ: I’ve noticed that people who have the impulse to collect are often building a kind of road map to their lives – a self-portrait, in a way. The collections I’ve always been most interested in are the ones that reflect the most disparate areas of interest. Those are the people I’m trying to reach with “Human | Nature”. Beyond that, I think that in modern, urban environments there’s a real loss that comes from being disconnected from ways of life and landscapes that were essential to us for the bulk of human history. When putting the collection together, I was interested in objects that struck a kind of primordial chord – that could satisfy, to whatever limited extent, a desire to return to things from which we’ve only recently become estranged. More simply, I think being surrounded by touchstones that remind us of nature provides a valuable counterpoint to the way we live now.BA: Could you share some details of the resources that you must have dipped into to curate the collection for Chamber? What are the geographical regions of the world that you touched upon while creating the collection?AZ: The collection spans a huge range of periods and materials – from a 145 million year-old dinosaur fossil to specially commissioned contemporary editions from a global community of young designers. On the one hand, it’s a deeply personal show, and I think it’s representative of the kind of rabbit holes I tend to go down when I become interested in something. When it came time to assemble the collection, I pulled a ton of books off my shelves and looked at the objects I’ve chosen to surround myself with. But we also live in a moment when we’re constantly encountering new information, particularly visual information, through platforms like Instagram. So while I was very familiar with Japanese aesthetics going into the project, I could also easily access areas of design that were unfamiliar to me. And working so closely with Juan – whose background and interests are different from my own – was an incredibly fruitful collaboration that really broadened the scope of the conversation. BA: What are the other projects that you are currently working on?AZ: In my studio practice, I continue to engage with an exploration of the natural world, which has been ongoing since 2003. At its core, the project is about reconciling our individual experience with a collective experience and the hope is that by providing individual engagement with an individual subject, the viewer has a space in which to connect with something larger. The past year was dedicated to series called “Me | We” about the relationship between the Earth and the moon. We’re currently in the research and development phase on new work based on rare life forms.Chamber is located at 515 W. 23rd Street NY, NY 10011. Visit chambernyc.com for detailsFollow@ARTINFOIndia
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