A glass and stone Mathieu Lehanneur sculpture.
Photo: Felipe Ribon

Mathieu Lehanneur’s Ethereal Objects at the Salon Art + Design Fair

By Aileen Kwun
November 16, 2019
2 minute read

The French designer Mathieu Lehanneur is known for creating both artful furniture and lighting as well as electronics, with a rare technical craftsmanship that combines art and design with science and technology. For his latest presentation, at New York’s Salon Art + Design fair, on view through Nov. 18 at the Park Avenue Armory, Lehanneur responded to the history of the building itself—a late 19th-century brick Gothic Revival structure, formerly the headquarters for the 7th regiment of the New York Militia—with “Soldier’s Retreat,” a collection of objects that embody the natural elements, seemingly frozen in time.

Among the works on view are Lehanneur’s weighty, hunky Ocean Memories marble tables, which mimic the fluid, rippling surface of an ocean with unreal detail—created by translating ocean currents into digital forms using 3-D software—and the luscious Inverted Gravity cabinets, made from solid marble and perched atop a cluster of blown-glass baubles, toeing the line between solidity and lightness. “I wanted to create a space absolutely isolated from the turmoil of the world,” he says. “A place where time is suspended, an Eden’s Garden. Like a peace found after the battlefields.”

Here, three other things to keep an eye out for at the fair this weekend:

1. Apparatus Studio’s Interlude collection of intricate, handcrafted lighting and furniture takes a page from the world of couture, featuring delicate embroidered patterns that are inspired by a musical score and the perceptual phenomenon of synesthesia. In the Library.

2. Milan’s Nilufar Gallery shares a mix of contemporary and historic works, from the likes of Martino Gamper to Gio Ponti, alongside a smattering of collages by Louise Nevelson. Booth A20.

3. Spot Conglo terrazzo coffee tables and other midcentury works by Norwegian architect and designer Erling Viksjø, who’s best known for his brutalist architecture and furniture that incorporates concrete and stone, from vintage maven Patrick Parrish. Booth B2.