To continue with the matching of Carroll’s classic characters, the twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee would have to be the works of the French designers Vincent Dubourg (1977) and Erwan Boulloud (1973) – the first working with Carpenters Workshop Gallery, the second with 21st Gallery – both engaged in a domestic reinterpretation of the expressive and conceptual themes of architectural deconstructivism from the late 1980s in the US.
Their works are apparently similar to the research of the British designer Jake Phipps for Todd Merrill Studio: his approach, however, dies not set out to explode the formal qualities of objects, but to emphasize the basic components of their material. While in his series Stellar glass and steel are enlarged under a microscope to show their mineral nature, likewise the support of his powerful Flux Console Table (2016) transmutes the fibrous nature of a traditional wooden base into a dizzying loop composed of a single sculptural macro-filament (actually half a kilometer of woven brass filaments, as in a gigantic energy conductor). The resulting gorgon effect seduces and paralyzes the observer with its monstrous mythological figure.
The trip across the looking glass cannot help but come to an end with the Red Queen herself: or blue, in this case, though she has been seen in a range of colors and materials. Here the maker is Harry Nuriev, a Russian designer, artist and architect, founder of Crosby Studios, and a rising star on the international interior design scene. His Crosby Tower (2017) for Patrick Parrish is not striking due to the outlandish shaping found in the work of many of his colleagues from across the sea. It is instead a linear, elegant shift of scale, towards an object based on models from architecture and painting of the early 20th century (rationalism, neo-plasticism).
Yet its presence is equally indispensable for this survey of a shared expressive trend. Because while it is true that every rule has its exception, it is also true that a taxonomy cannot exist without an ample category of ‘miscellaneous.’ Especially on the other side of the mirror.