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These Chairs Were Made in 3 Days

The exhibition "Make-do," curated by the Los Angeles-based gallery Marta and auction house Catalog Sale, is a temporary showcase of 24 antique and contemporary chairs. Housed in a decade-vacant postmodernist building on the Bowery, the exhibition space itself, with its cracked linoleum, uneven tile, and galvanized-metal walls, reflects a history of transformation from a bank to a nightclub to a medical center. This raw, half-demolished environment, designed by Cat Snodgrass of Bi-Rite Studio, provides a fitting backdrop for the collection of ad hoc furniture, which similarly showcases inventive repurposing and improvisation. The show, coinciding with New York Design Week, serves as an homage to the "make-do" ethos, particularly relevant to urban living. Benjamin Critton and Heidi Korsavong of Marta, along with Avi Kovacevich of Catalog Sale, challenged 12 contemporary designers to create chairs within a strict three-day timeframe. This constraint removed typical design pressures, encouraging a focus on readily available materials and quick execution. These newly commissioned pieces are displayed alongside 12 antique chairs from Kovacevich's personal collection, which he began after being inspired by photographs of cobbled-together chairs in China. The contemporary chairs largely feature materials and objects found in the artists' studios. Examples include Sarah Burns's low-slung wood chair made from furniture offcuts, Shaina Tabak's creation from scrap aluminum and reclaimed wood, and Sebastijan Jemec and Georgia McGovern's piece incorporating scrap wood and a beaded car-seat cover. Other designers, like Samuel Brockman, pushed their boundaries by welding together unconventional items such as a metal sink and part of a walker. The exhibition invites visitors to observe the unexpected forms that emerge from familiar elements and to compare the improvisational approaches of artists across different eras. While some contemporary pieces appear more refined, the antique chairs bear the marks of repairs, additions, dirt, and extensive use, embodying a deeper history of practical adaptation. A key theme is the recurrence of similar problem-solving methods: Chen Chen & Kai Williams's rope-entwined twig chair echoes a 19th-century twig chair from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, both sharing a spindly aesthetic. Similarly, Isabel Rower's stoneware chair, made from a cardboard mold, mirrors the size and shape of an anonymous 2010s cardboard chair from Kings County, New York, highlighting a shared conceptual approach despite different materials and permanence. #DesignHunting #Design #CatalogSale #Marta #FurnitureDesign #NYCxDESIGN #Exhibition #AdHocDesign #RecycledMaterials #DesignHunting #Design #CatalogSale #Marta #FurnitureDesign #NYCxDESIGN #Exhibition #AdHocDesign #RecycledMaterials
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