Exhibitions

In this Miami episode, we continue our investigation into the theme of “Digital Ornamentalism”. Informed by extremely heterogeneous visual infuences, the works presented here strike us for an aesthetic language that seemingly attempts to transmute the digital obsession of recent years back into material form. It’s as if NFT culture has come full circle, resurfacing in the physical world and attempting to surpass it, transcending the virtual while retaining its decorative signature.

This is the case for Hannah Lim’s pottery, even though her work originates from research on ancient Asian craftsmanship; and it is even more literal in Ryan Decker’s lamps or Isabel Rower’s wooden stools, liberally tagged with illustrations. The same emerges from the acidic, viral patterns that inhabit Stefania Ruggiero’s carpets or from Clara Schweers, Delphine Lejeune, and Kurina Sohn’s ethereal fowers-sculptures that weave borosilicate glass with 3D printing.

Alcova's Showroom is a small and intimate exhibition space that explores future-oriented design, challenging the canons, embracing current cultural discourse and exploring the ways in which our collective thinking is evolving around themes such as new aesthetics, new materials, gender, social justice and the environment.

Alcova Project Space is a new entity within Alcova. In this “exhibition within an exhibition,” we collect things that intrigue us – projects that capture our imagination or that touch us deeply in some way. Here we give vent to our curatorial instincts to piece together an image of what most resonates with us on the contemporary design scene, emerging or otherwise.

What do these pieces have in common? In some cases, it is a question of aesthetic language; in others, it is a certain resonance with the spirit of our times. For this first episode, we chose to investigate three thematic strands, each touching on distinct aspects of the present.

The first is Digital Ornamentalism. Informed by extremely heterogeneous visual influences, the works presented in this section strike us for an aesthetic language which seemingly attempts to transmute the digital obsession of recent years back into material form. It’s as if the NFT boom suddenly found itself projected into the physical world and at the same time attempted to surpass it, transcending it while retaining its decorative signature. This is the case for Hannah Lim’s pottery, even though her work originates from a research on ancient Asian craftsmanship; and it is even more literal for Ryan Decker’s lamps or Isabel Rower’s wooden stools, liberally tagged with illustrations.