VIEWING ROOM
MARION FRIEDMANN GALLERY AT ZONA MACO 2023
8.2. - 12.2. 2023, Mexico City, MX.
Marion Friedmann Gallery participated at ZONAMACO 2023, Latin America's trailblazing art fair in the heart of Mexico City. The gallery booth presented a selection of works by gallery artists Julio Martínez Barnetche, thierry jeannot and Noémi Kiss.
We were featuring two light pieces, carved in volcanic stone with gold leaf applications by Mexican artist Julio Martínez Barnetche. Both are a feat in their technical achievement and the carving of the stone. Julio also presented his sculptural necklaces from his recent ‘Egypt’ jewellery collection. The collections consists of 18 unique pieces crafted in 1st-grade Afghanistan Lapis Lazuli, ebony wood and solid gold-plated silver.
The ‘EGYPT’ collection was presented in the mesmerising ‘CABINA’, a custom-made vitrine to house one’s gems. The vitrine has a diamond-shaped crystal glass hood and is made of beautiful Pucte wood, a hardwood native to the south of México. Hand-forged brass elements and details hold together the wood and glass parts and create the perfect home for precious gems. Three lockable drawers open to both sides. This is an ideal piece for private homes and in a retail setting, where you wish to draw attention and display your extraordinary objects.
French-Mexican designer Thierry Jeannot’s chandelier, ‘5S QUINTO SOL’, made of plastic bottle waste is another marvel of our selection. The piece is a result of Jeannot’s over 25-year-long research into the PET material and its characters and origins within the trash system in Mexico City. The artist achieves a true transformation of those specimens of plastic. ‘Waste is a luxury’: here plastic waste mutates into a luxury chandelier. The pieces have a strong effect on the public eye and appear like a crystal or glass chandelier.
TEOTL, our unique table light pays tribute to TEOTL,
the Nahuatl (Aztec) expression for god, or the divine. Teotl is the creator and father of life. In its essence, it represents sacred power and continuous energy in motion. Process, movement, becoming and transmutation are essential attributes of Teotl. This corresponds with Jeannot's work, where plastic and waste material enter into a process of transmutation and transcend into a new cosmos in the
form of intriguing light objects.
In Aztec metaphysics there exists in essence just one thing: dynamic, eternally self-generating and self-regenerating power, force, or energy in motion.
Teotl can be thought of as something like electricity. Our Teotl is an electrifying light source and sculpture, re-generating plastic waste into electricity.
Our definitive booth magnet was the huge and impressive wall hanging by the master of
manipulating salvaged, oriental-style rugs, Noémi Kiss from Austria (born in Romania).
‘SEDA/SILK’ is an overpainted Kerman rug, in french Louis XVI-style design, approximately from the 1930ies. The artist Noemi Kiss skillfully applies her painterly interventions to make the rug look like a smooth silk cloth in folds.
A Kerman is a traditional classification of a Persian carpet. Kerman is a city and province located in south-central Iran. Kerman has been a major centre for the production of high-quality carpets since the 15th century.
[SIZE: L: 340 cm W: 237 cm - can be hung horizontally and vertically]
FEATURED ARTWORKS
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
JULIO MARTÍNEZ BARNETCHE
Julio is a Mexican stone sculptor and artist working with precious and semiprecious stones. His oeuvre entails not only sculpture, but also furniture in special wood, stone and metal combinations, jewellery, as well as tableware and cooking devices in volcanic stone. Martínez Barnetche moves easily between pure sculpture, furniture and objects. He often takes his materials as he encounters them naturally. In some pieces handcrafted forgery is applied, this is where the artist explores the target, the piece's final destination.
“The aesthetic marriage of materials is forever a dance between tension and harmony, permanent and transient and soft and hard.”
THIERRY JEANNOT
A French-born designer living in Mexico for the last 30 years. Thierry has been working across product design, furniture and social design and his focus generates high added value to recycled materials through design. He is interested in traditional techniques and materials and has worked closely with crafts-people both in Paris (back in the 80s with fashion guru Thierry Mugler) and later with the workshops he discovered in Mexico City.
He follows a design philosophy where design and the production process are never separated. In the 1980s he began working with a range of unconventional or ‘outlandish’ materials, like for example acrylics and plastics. For the last ten years he has been working mainly with the PET bottle as his raw-material. He explores various techniques of using the bottle and to transform its materiality and status to favourable acclaim both in Mexico and The United States.
NOÉMI KISS
Noémi holds a Master in Architecture from the Technical University of Vienna and a Master in Philosophy from the Vienna University of Humanities. In 2011 she founded the Viennese fashion label WIENER FETZEN. Between 2011-2013 she collaborated as the artist-Duo KISS THE REICHL. Since 2013 – she has been working on her own, as an artist on the interface between art, design and architecture.
An architect and philosopher, Kiss re-incarnates old Persian rugs and alters them into new surprising forms, implementing new functions, structures and loads them with strong symbols. Let it be cut out or painted the original meaning gets a new angle. New silhouettes emerge from the surface in a strong livelihood.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING US!!
PLEASE DROP US A LINE FOR ANY COMMENTS, FEEDBACK OR QUESTIONS.
SEE YOU SOON.
Marion with SEDA / SILK, by Noémi Kiss.