Film: Exclusive film made by Interview Magazine shot by Sean & Seng, for the cover girl, the noted singer Lana Del Rey.
Film: Exclusive film made by Interview Magazine shot by Sean & Seng, for the cover girl, the noted singer Lana Del Rey.
There is a playfulness in the products of STUDIOLAV that sits easily somewhere between pencils with the ironic message ‘Design Is Dead’ arranged in almost an echo of a scene from Ken Russell’s The Devils to bone china plates entitled ‘Diet’ sporting only bones on the plate! The products seem familiar in shape but are refreshingly different in content. Even the tea-towel on sale ‘Line the Gap’ brings a smile as a grown-up connect the dots game is offered! Everything about these designs feels fresh and interactive. There is homage to tradition in the weave used in a chair seat but the simplicity of presentation and comfort offered is most definitely, signature to this exciting new design studio. With their products available in places as far ranging as London, Glasgow, Athens, and Auckland, what comes out of STUDIOLAV is bound to have an impact on taste and design across the world. The Pandorian went behind the designs to discover the minds who make it all happen. In a time of global austerity it is fabulous to discover young talent that has a great future and indeed, a most excellent present!
The pencil has become redundant and widely replaced by software and other computer based tools that form the main mediums for designers to express ideas on every stage of the design process. STUDIOLAV is paying homage to the beloved pencils by creating its sacred symbol to be place in our little “graveyard” on our desk, the pencil holders. A reminder to the extinction of a companion to our creativity. And you can now buy them online for the symbolic £3.00 at CultureLabel!
PP. Can you please introduce yourself?
SL. STUDIOLAV is a creative collaboration between myself [Loukas Angelou] and Vasso Asfi. We both graduated from Central Saint Martin’s in London, and our diverse background covers the fields of interior, product and jewellery design.
Our coming together story is one of sweet coincidences, or fate as some would like to think. After Vasso took me around for a tour at Central Saint Martins, we met again at my graduation show, where she left a note offering an interview at the company she was working for. Soon after that we found ourselves exhibiting together at the London design Festival and this is where and when it all began.
Both very excited about design and the world around us, it seems that many times we share similar initial ideas but our approach differs. We would like to think this is a great asset within a creative partnership.
We are both of a curious nature, and before long, design registered as a career choice. We have been always admiring and appreciating the simplest things around us and had a flirtatious attitude towards the beauty of objects.
STUDIOLAV has teamed up with MarcVonS to produce a range of products reflecting on the daily life of a contemporary household. A range of plates and mugs where its use is defined by the ornamental features, printed on the object’s surface on a grid like design commenting on the digital construction of objects, but transferred on a 2D format.
PP. Who and what influences you?
SL. Design is an everyday encounter, not always visible but always present. With that in mind we draw inspiration from something very basic; a movement, a texture, a ritual. Sometimes we use design to provide solutions and others to comment on ideas, behaviours and current social affairs. We try not to have a stiff approach on how to apply the process on every project and quite often we work on an idea that makes us laugh and we want to share it with everyone.
PP. What is the concept behind STUDIOLAV?
SL. STUDIOLAV is a young and passionate, multidisciplinary, design studio. Through our work we look into different ways of reinterpreting existing ideas. With a playful and ironic spirit we express our investigating tendencies and curiosities regarding perceptions of form and materiality. We understand the importance of the emotional connection between people and objects and we use narratives to expose it.
We like to get our hands dirty and we are always on the quest of realising new concepts.
Along with expanding our existing product collection, we are currently curating a project that invites a group of international designers to experiment with an iconic everyday object. Through this initiative we are aiming to introduce design to a wider audience.
At the same time we are working on a very exciting retail interior project while we are taking on board commissions from a variety of clients.
Weave plates, is part of a crockery collection that borrows iconic wicker weaving patterns, traditionally used in the furniture design industry, to create a playful game that challenges material perception.
PP. What are your future plans?
SL. Last year has been a very productive one for the studio and we are delighted to be in a number of lovely boutiques and concept stores across the globe, including UK, New Zealand, Taipei and Greece.
We are positive that this year we will have the opportunity to grow and further define the essence of STUDIOLAV. We are always looking to expand our practise through commissions and collaborations with other creatives and gallery spaces on challenging briefs.
K1 chair is playing with our perception by using a soft material, merino wool, as its base to sit on. Rigidity is added by using a traditional weaving method. Further referencing to heritage is present by adopting two archetypal chair forms and merging them into a contemporary piece of design. K1 is part of the ongoing project Kafeneon.
Text: © Predrag Pajdic, 2012
Captions & Images: Courtesy of
And now, by a transition which he did not notice, it seemed that what had begun as speech was turned into sight, or into something that can be remembered only as if it were seeing. He thought he saw the Great Dance. It seemed to be woven out of the intertwining undulation of many cords or bands of light, leaping over and under one another and mutually embraced in arabesques and flower-like subtleties. Each figure as he looked at it became the master-figure or focus of the whole spectacle, by means of which his eye disentangled all else and brought it into unity — only to be itself entangled when he looked to what he had taken for mere marginal decorations and found that there also the same hegemony was claimed, and the claim made good, yet the former pattern thereby disposed but finding in its new subordination a significance greater than that which it had abdicated. He could see also (but the word “seeing” is now plainly inadequate) wherever the ribbons or serpents of light intersected minute corpuscles of momentary brightness: and he knew somehow that these particles were the secular generalities of which history tells — people, institutions, climates of opinion, civilizations, arts, sciences and the like — ephemeral coruscations that piped their short song and vanished. The ribbons or cords themselves, in which millions of corpuscles lived and died, were the things of some different kind. At first he could not say what. But he knew in the end that most of them were individual entities. If so, the time in which the Great Dance proceeds is very unlike time as we know it. Some of the thinner more delicate cords were the beings that we call short lived: flowers and insects, a fruit or a storm of rain, and once (he thought) a wave of the sea. Others were such things we think lasting: crystals, rivers, mountains, or even stars. Far above these in girth and luminosity and flashing with colours form beyond our spectrum were the lines of personal beings, yet as different from one another in splendour as all of them from the previous class. But not all the cords were individuals: some of them were universal truths or universal qualities. It did not surprise him then to find that these and the persons were both cords and both stood together as against the mere atoms of generality which lived and died in the clashing of their streams: But afterwards, when he came back to earth, he wondered. And by now the thing must have passed together out of the region of sight as we understand it. For he says that the whole figure of there enamored and inter-inanimate circling was suddenly revealed as the mere superficies of a far vaster pattern in four dimensions, and that figure as the boundary of yet others in other worlds: till suddenly as the movement grew yet swifter, the interweaving yet more ecstatic, the relevance of all to all yet more intense, as dimension was added to dimension and that part of him which could reason and remember was dropped further and further behind that part of him which saw, even then, at the very zenith of complexity, complexity was eaten up and faded, as a thin white cloud fades into the hard blue burning of sky, and all simplicity beyond all comprehension, ancient and young as spring, illimitable, pellucid, drew him with cords of infinite desire into its own stillness. He went up into such a quietness, a privacy, and a freshness that at the very moment when he stood farthest from our ordinary mode of being he had the sense of stripping off encumbrances and awaking from a trance, and coming to himself. With a gesture of relaxation he looked about him…
Images: © Petra Reimann, 2012. Featuring Valentin Brase from the Nest Model Menagment, Berlin.
Courtesy of Petra Reimann
Text: From Perelandra [1943] by C. S. Lewis [1898 – 1963]
Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.
Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
Images: © Erick Soler, 2012 with Lou Felipe. Courtesy of the artist.
Text: From Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince), 1943, a novel by Antoine de Saint Exupéry.
3 guys, 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano, 2 cameras and almost a terabyte of footage… all to turn 3 ambitious linear concepts based on movement, learning and food… into 3 beautiful and hopefully compelling short films…
Rick Mereki: Director, producer, additional camera and editing
Tim White: DOP, producer, primary editing, sound
Andrew Lees: Actor, mover, groover
Kelsey James: Music
These films were commissioned by STA Travel Australia
Red hot chili peppers and butterflies amorously caressing white winter flowers, in conjunction with homemade cookies and grandma’s old china over ottoman silk fabric woven with gold and silver thread, sensuously open the gates of the artist’s Paradise, leading us to his chosen place of joy, pleasure and perpetual bliss.
Nikos Triantaphyllou studied Political Science at the Athens Panteio University, and Fashion at the Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design in London, the Aesthetic Restoration of works of art in Florence, Painting in the Department of Visual and Applied Arts of the School of Fine Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and Museology as part of the ‘Museology’ Inter-University Programme of Postgraduate Studies of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and of the University of Western Macedonia.
He has presented his works in exhibitions at the State Museum of Contemporary Art and the Centre for Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, the Benaki Museum, the Athens National Gallery, private collections (Nikos Alexiou, Leonidas Beltsiou, Aris Stoïdis), and art galleries in Athens and Thessaloniki, in Athens, Thessaloniki, Naxos, Nafplio, Trikala, Vienna, and Sarajevo.
In the work of Nikos Triantaphyllou, dream images co-exist with conscious experiences. The result which is produced, often combining a variety from the range of artistic media, seems naturalistic and at the same time mysterious. The experiences of prosaic, lowly everyday routine are mutated into reflections of nostalgic timeless loci of spiritual alertness and fulfillment.
© Nikos Triantaphyllou, 2011
The Gates of Paradise; Still Life After Jan Van Kessel
Archival inkjet print, 112 x 110 cm
Images: Courtesy of Nikos Triantaphyllou
The dropped petals upon the painted fabric
Are the same colour as your upper lip,
The lower lip having lost its sheen,
Smeared away in some transacted encounter.
Traces of Fuchsia remain on a chin too young
Too smooth for stubble.
Sweat glints as the sun’s light shatters
And breaks into a thousand kerosene lamps
Along the streets and alleys.
Time stands still.
All hustle and bustle of busy market vendors
Preparing for home has diminished.
You have turned it down without forethought.
All movement abates and in the silence
Which hangs thickly like uncarded wool
You become aware of yourself
Too tired to change direction
In this life or the next.
The shades on your skin remind me
Of the silken robe I’m having made
And as you smile, I wonder how long
Each beauty can exist before it is destined to fade.
Text: © J. L. Nash, 2012
Images: © Predrag Pajdic, 2012. Decorative ceramic tiles from The Grand Palace in Bangkok, January 2012
When I cracked open your skull
T’was because I wanted to see
If you were human inside
If you were
Like me
Its confusing and I forget
My manners sometimes
Could be reminded that another way works
Do you still love me
Though you taste the stuff of my
Dreams not yours to decide
If you were
Like me
Its confronting and I offer
My hand a gesture
Shrouding a darker intention you already know
You are responsible for my genesis
As is your brother each a little
Prospero playing with wind
If you were
Like me
You’d have the fire and sun
To hold and control
Now manage the rights of my rage and your rejection.
Text: © J. L. Nash, 2012
Images: © Predrag Pajdic, 2012. Photographed in London on the 14 January 2012 with Dominic Johnson.
Velvet red
Is the colour of your heart
Whose beats draw a line
Between you and me
Golden yellow
Scales swim through
The landscape i wish to
Own, to master, to taste
Velvet green
Leaves surround peonies
Creating the softest of beds
In a seasonless moment
Light turquoise
Rides the back of the dragon
When chrysanthemums open
To reveal my intentions
Lavender
Traces invite intimacy
As waters cascade and tumble
Like your hair over your eyes
Medium brown
An outline of today
An indication of tomorrow
Forgetting to record the past
Evil red
The naughtiest of energies
Spills like blood from your brow
A tiff that marks a regretful intervention
Brilliant yellow
Shines golden coins dropping
From some strange carp’s mouth
Into the centre of a lotus
Green
Were the colour of your eyes
Before you adorned yourself
With more than one mask
Light water
Kisses have been left on your body
By others before my adventures
Led me to your oceans
Deep turquoise
Is the sound my throat makes
When you pass your lips
Over my white unshaded neck
Japan rose
I can almost smell them
In your shoulder blades as you lean
And i moved forward now
Flesh tone
Decided to return as you had
Forgotten what it should be
And mine was so different
Tiger orange
Your temper is etched into
The layers of your history
Ready to permeate your future
Velvet yellow
In the eyes of the snake
Waking to a new season
A part of your history proclaimed
Tropical green
Taking cover in the cover
An outcast needs away from
Prying eyes and judgement calls
Brilliant blue
Tusnami rolls from your tongue
As you speak of destruction
As you lie by my side
Dark blue
There is only this oceanic path
I trace it upon you as you sleep
As i wonder and gaze
Dark rose
Cherry blossom brings into this bed
March’s reach out of winter’s clutch
Did you find it then, as you searched?
Cover white
I can almost believe in you
Snow on mount fuji
Reminds me that you are human
Brilliant orange
The sun is setting upon us
Perhaps you should have carried
A timepiece instead of a flag
Lime green
This losing hand stands out
Luminescent in its uselessness
I suggest you drop it
Paradise green
Backs the notions of flowers
On cards when they are passed around
To forget hardships
Light blue
My eyes looking at you
Looking straight at you
Looking into you
Purple
Scatters the seeds of sorrow
Even you cannot hide the stains
The smudges of indecision
Wood maroon
Earthy and violent marks out the
Insignia of your own life
A seller of spring time.
***
Text: © J. L. Nash, 2012
Image: © Predrag Pajdic, 2012. Taken in Bangkok on 11 January 2012 with Francisco Polo
Rage can look like flowers. They fell from your eyes and I watched, mesmerised. My dreams are winning and one day, I will not awake to taste the food you cooked for me. I felt a rumble and outside my window, a wave of civilisations fell without cries or religions. I held you and our cat close to me and I closed my eyes.
Text: © Lucius Bod, 2012
Images: © Predrag Pajdic, 2012
