EXHIBITION - $H!T HAPPENS IN BERLIN

 

Why Berlin? Once an industrial center and later a city divided, Berlin’s walls fell years ago, and its gates have since remained open for experimentation. The city attracts artists and designers from around the world to its former factory buildings, transformed into studios and galleries. An innovative travelling exhibit curated by Juergen Mayer H. at Relative Space New York.

Berlin’s streets foster potential for what is new perhaps more than any other place today. It has become an avant-garde capital for design in an unlikely locale, inviting international talents in the overlapping disciplines of art, architecture, industrial and product design.

The exhibition “$H!T HAPPENS In Berlin” explores the aesthetic and technical innovators of creative in the city, showcasing both emerging and established designers. The unexpected is the norm; trials and errors, miscalculations and failures, experimentation and surprise – all result in ingenious design strategies.

The outcome of those experiments will be on view from May 14th, 2011 in the New York City showroom and June 13th, 2011 in the Toronto showroom of Relative Space & Floorworks, the leading Canadian custom-design wood flooring and carpeting company. A video wall will be installed in the storefront of the Relative Space showroom, with all creative content streamed 24/7 to showcase the upcoming exhibit.

This special exhibit also corresponds to the NoHo Design District showroom program during May 2011. Juergen Mayer H., who curated all visual elements for this compelling Berlin series that features fifteen designers: “We are interested in questioning conventions and common agreements, or things that we seem to take for granted. Through design and architecture – every scale and field in which we are working – we want to open the eyes of the viewer to be aware or critical, or discover what’s new and the potential of what is around us. In architecture, we play with scales and conventions of materials and we blur ideas of tectonics and structure, therefore creating a sculptural quality or an atmosphere.” 

Architect Juergen Mayer H., recipient of the Audi Urban Future Award and Relative Space principal Tyler Greenberg conceived of this event jointly. They invited a co-generational cross-section of designers, who in turn invited others to join in curating the objects for display. Relative Space will host a new flooring and textile product booth for ICFF at the Javis Center (number 1048) and launch a dedicated online product site called RStoo.com featuring the Berlin designers on display in the Bond Street showroom.

For further information, please see also:

berlinhappens.com

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