THE NEW TRANSCENDENCE CURATED BY GLENN ADAMSON
FRIEDMAN BENDA 515 WEST 26TH STREET NEW YORK NY 10011
We Want to Take You Higher by Glenn Adamson Transcendence. The word means, literally, “rising above,” and the feeling of it is just that: a certain interval, perhaps sustained, perhaps over in a mere flash, in which the everyday world falls away, and a higher connection prevails. Is it likely – is it even possible – that one could find such uplift in design? The prospect may seem remote. Chairs, lamps, cabinets, and vessels are earthly things. They attend to our practical rather than our spiritual needs. They are often regarded as mere commodities, or otherwise cast in a cultural supporting role. What would it take for us to invert these expectations, and to see functional objects as the ultimate vehicle for transport? More than that: to see them as incarnating, on the worldly plane, a quality of transcendence that is sui generis, literally super-human, providing to us nothing but inspiration and requiring little more than reverence? This exhibition offers a provisional answer to these questions, which are among the most challenging that could be brought to contemporary design. It is a focused undertaking, with only six participants, but an extremely ambitious one, in that it departs decisively from established expectations of design. We readily associate it with a range of objectives: experimenting with new technologies, prototyping material solutions, expressing individual sensibility, capturing the zeitgeist. Despite that range, though, design these days is almost entirely secular in intent, and typically very goal-oriented, from the point of genesis to realization. This is part of its inheritance from modernism, the period when the design avant-garde first assumed a radical posture, repudiating traditional frameworks, including those of religion.
The New Transcendence marks an emergent re-evaluation in this state of affairs. It is the culmination of a trilogy, three shows each devoted to a developing tendency in design today. The series began in 2021 with A New Realism, which looked at materially intensive processes as a means to individualistic expression, and continued in 2022 with The New Figuration, an examination of the human form as inspiration. Now, we look in a different direction. Not at what design is made from, and how; not to what it depicts; but to the domain of immateriality itself. We look upwards, in other words, and in doing so, complete a metaphorical arc from raw matter, and its transformation, through the body, to the heavens. Together, these three exhibitions, speculative as they may be, also suggest a momentous paradigm shift for the design avant-garde. The modernist legacy (including its solipsistic “postmodern” critique) is ultimately concerned with cultural questions, taking for granted the principle that design can, should, and indeed must shape the world for the better. But under present conditions, there seems to be a turn inward, to personal resources, imagery, and beliefs. This should not be seen as a sign of retreat. On the contrary, the works we presented in A New Realism and The New Figuration asserted a potent new role for the design avant-garde, in which its problem-solving, formpropagating tendencies were deemphasized in favor of personal narratives. Rather than adopting a position of objective authority, so intrinsic to the modernist designer’s persona and now so difficult to justify, they modeled a self-aware subjectivity.
The New Transcendence extends this picture by considering the way energy passes from person to person, and from the person to the cosmos, via the object as medium. This principle is best demonstrated in the gallery space itself. To the extent that the exhibition’s six participants are in a conversation with one another, that is only because we have orchestrated it. And yet there is, among the group, a remarkable internal resonance, born of a continuity of purpose. All of them create objects that are infused with profound significance, whether as relics, ritual tools, or representations: material anchors for spiritual expression and meaning. In October of last year, as we were organizing this exhibition, Andrea Branzi died, aged 85. His presence here is intended partly as a tribute, partly as a reflection on his own thoughts about spirituality. From his first experimental work with Archizoom Associati to his most recent works – including the triptych of Roots chairs that preside over our show – he pursued a profound synthesis, in which human beings, technology, and the natural world were understood as imbricated in one another. He was the ultimate exponent of “organic design,” not in the sense that term was typically used in the 1950s (biomorphic shapes) or more recently (biomimetic processes),
but rather in the sense of pursuing a larger integration, in which the object is conceived as a nexus or convergence within “a flow of various dynamic energies.” He took the same view of his own practice. Branzi didn’t really think of himself as a professional designer. He characterized his activities as more like “a domestic scenario, a very full house bursting with interfamily connections, including both people and animals… an affirmation of the comedy of life, of work, of art.” This same perspective pervades The New Transcendence. The works we have included here arise at the confluence of designedly procedure with larger, more inchoate forces. Precisely which forces these might be differ; each of the other five participants may be said to have their own theology of practice. Their philosophies and methods are constituted from domains as varied as animism and artificial intelligence, careful observation of nature and autonomous abstraction. While most of the works on view are furniture, nominally speaking, they occupy real space without being subsumed into its exigencies; what they furnish, primarily, is the mind and spirit. These foundations anchor our exhibition far from the domain of organized religion and its trappings. To be sure, physical artifacts may help the prepared faithful along their way to transcendence: the chalice and paten of the Catholic host, the ark that holds the Torah scrolls, the intoning bell of Buddhist ceremony, the intricate tilework of mosques. All of these archetypes have persisted over the course of generations, indexing tidal shifts in aesthetics even as they retained an underlying continuity of meaning. But these are not useful precedents for contemporary design, who, unlike artisans who fashioned ecclesiastical equipment in the past, are working well outside of proscribed forms. Their definition of the sacred is too pervasive for that, too integrated into the texture of everyday life; it is more akin to the holistic spirituality of traditional and Indigenous cultures (frequently, they take direct inspiration from those sources) than holy but separate precincts. Yet the works in The New Transcendence are indeed extraordinary, and in a somewhat different sense than the exemplary objects seen in the first two installments of our trilogy. It is perhaps difficult to account for their power fully; doubtless, itis the result of deep commitment on the designers’ part, but there is also something that remains private, originating in the soul. Apart from Branzi’s triad of chairs, we made the decision to present only one object by each participating designer; thus highlighted, they come across, almost, as allegorical selfportraits. Almost – because each of these designers also aspires to a certain universality. This is the paradoxical promise of the spiritual, and what most accounts for its new relevance in contemporary design. Gestures beyond the self, beyond the social, offer the possibility of a communal binding. Each of us may differ in our beliefs, but most would say they believe in something; life would otherwise be unnavigable. In seeing others ask themselves big questions (for doubt is also a ground spring for spirituality) and offering their own individual responses, we recognize something of our own struggle. The drive toward transcendence is just a fundamental part of being human; perhaps it is the one impulse that most distinguishes us from other forms of consciousness (animal, technological, and those yet to be imagined). This is a final continuity between the present exhibitions and its predecessors. The New Realism and A New Figuration sought to map the common ground of design in the 21st century, a foundation still in formation. With this last show in the series, we continue this project, now illuminating the discipline’s highest aspiration: the impetus to infuse contemporary objects with a degree of the miraculous. Design, after all, is our emissary in the world. We should expect of it nothing less.
No exhibition has a single point of origin. But if this one did, it would be Ini Archibong’s Stargazer chair, and more specifically, the conversation that he had about it with Stephen Burks, as part of the Design in Dialogue interview series. Burks proposed that there might be an urgent role for design today: to serve as a kind of receiver for forces beyond the self, whether from nature, from one another, or from ancestral spirits. Archibong concurred, and added that this higher level of consciousness, today, often feels out of joint: “The moment that we get back to the original way that we were meant to co-exist, operating toward a collective goal, the closer we are to a place where nature is no longer there to be dominated.” Archibong made the Stargazer back in 2014 – fully ten years ago – but already, it powerfully incarnates this instinct. Its unusual laidback lines, inspired partly by the seating forms of the Lobi people of West Africa (today’s Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast) invite a posture somewhere between sitting and lying down. So cradled – and this is true even indoors, in a symbolic sense – one is invited to gaze heavenward, to relax the body and to travel beyond it in the mind. This is an old, old idea. We easily forget how recent, and how Eurocentric, is the understanding of furniture as a convenient domestic array. Globally and trans historically, its role has much more commonly been to engage with larger forces, as in the patriarchal thrones of Asian and African cultures (including that of the Lobi), where sitting directly on the ground is the norm. Archibong engages with this deep history while also ensuring that his object is surpassingly contemporary, giving it the overall lines of a racecar (somewhat anticipating Samuel Ross’s work in this respect). There is something futuristic about the Stargazer – even its title feels drawn from science fiction. It is at once an anchor in the now, a place to reflect, and also a vehicle in which to navigate time itself. “Even the most banal objects have energetic power,” Archibong has noted. “My IKEA shelves are doing their best to suppress my soul right now. But if you engage with craft that transmits energy from somebody with intention to the user – you get transcendental design.” It’s as good a definition of this exhibition’s objectives as any, and one perfectly exemplified by Archibong’s work. For emotionally, despite its origins in his own specific experience, it offers grace to anyone who encounters it, no matter what their beliefs may or may not be.
INI ARCHIBONG American, b. 1983
Ini Archibong [American, b. 1983] Stargazer, 2022 Bronze 26.25 x 18 x 40.5 inches 67 x 45.5 x 103 cm Edition of 8
With Andrea Branzi’s passing in October of 2023, we had occasion to reflect not only on his own contributions to art, architecture, and design, but also on the magnitude of the Italian radical movement as a whole, of which he had been such a crucial protagonist. He was one of its most versatile figures, branching seemingly effortlessly across scales (from objects to urban planning), multivalent thematic concerns, and diverse arenas of action (designing, writing, organizing). His energies remained generative to the last. In early 2023, Friedman Benda presented his final solo exhibition, Contemporary DNA. The title aptly captured the works on view, which were composed of the conceptual building blocks of Branzi’s designs over the course of decades: found natural forms combined with industrial, abstract ones, a chemical combination distilled to its pure essence. Even at the time, that exhibition had the aspect of a concluding statement; now that he is no longer with us, it is tempting to see it also as an apotheosis, a moment of self-transcendence. Like other late, great artists (Titian springs to mind), Branzi achieved a rare state of clarity, as if he were surveying his own past production from a mountaintop of hindsight. Nor was this terrain only autobiographical. In a text accompanying his Roots series – three examples we include in The New Transcendence – he wrote:
Overcoming the limits of technologies and professions, we consecrate ancient trunks and barks that will never reproduce. Infinitely different series, marked by unpredictable colors and grotesque objects, they save the world from the infinite ugliness of that which exists. Here Branzi adopts the language of a prophet, who perceives a fallen world all around him – it’s vital sources all uprooted, preserved only as twisted remnants. Yet the objects themselves are anything but despairing. They allude to the medieval typology of a reliquary, something approached with reverence, often in hopes of miraculous healing. In this sense, and also in their vividly unresolved juxtaposition of opposites, suggest the landscape of possibility that lies beyond specialist paradigms, the artificial horizon lines imposed by “technologies and professions.” As pessimistic as Branzi’s words quoted above may initially seem, you’ll notice that they also communicate a wild hope: that if design could be expressive enough, it might just save the world by its own example. Other designers, other generations, will have to take up that challenge now. Meanwhile Branzi’s words and works remain to us, as guiding lights.
ANDREA BRANZI Italian, 1938-2023
Andrea Branzi [Italian, 1938-2023] Roots, 2022 Metal mesh, hand painted wood, painted aluminum 54.25 x 23.75 x 26.5 inches 138 x 60 x 67 cm Unique, from a series of 12
Andrea Branzi [Italian, 1938-2023] Roots, 2022 Metal mesh, hand painted wood, painted aluminum 45.75 x 39.5 x 23.75 inches 116 x 100 x 60 cm Unique, from a series of 12
Andrea Branzi [Italian, 1938-2023] Roots, 2022 Metal mesh, hand painted wood, painted aluminum 54 x 26.5 x 23.75 inches 137 x 67 x 60 cm Unique, from a series of 12
“Self-transcendence is the starting point of Black resistance.” So says Stephen Burks, reflecting upon the traumatic yet awe-inspiring history of the African-American experience. He frames the accomplishments of his forebears, who overcame such unknowable hardships, as powerful acts of spiritual self-preservation. The diasporic situation, as Burks analyzes it, is like an inverted version of Abraham Maslow’s famous pyramid of the hierarchy of needs. In the absence of sufficient food, shelter, and bodily safety, people of African descent have often sustained themselves on spirit alone, a philosophy expressed in song and language and handed down over generations. In acknowledgment of this past, he affirms, “We believe our ancestors are always with us.” This powerful idea animates his new body of work, simply entitled Ancestors. It marks an important paradigm shift. Previously, over the course of his career, Burks has essentially operated as a product designer, albeit one with a socially expansive conception of that role. (Indeed, he was the first African-American to achieve broad success in the field.) Most often, he establishes close working relationships with company artisans, collaborating with them to develop novel techniques and forms. It is an innovative craft-based strategy, but also clientfocused, responsive to a given set of existing possibilities. Now, however, he is departing from such commercial design briefs, striking out on his own - an approach perfectly suited to his recent ceramics design fellowship at Brooklyn’s new fabrication hub, Powerhouse Arts. The new project builds upon a recent series of experimental objects, commissioned by the High Museum of Art as part of his traveling mid-career survey Shelter in Place. Created during the summer of 2020, during the pandemic lockdown, these gave form to pressing social issues, particularly in reaction to the Black Lives Matter protests. Burks showcased his hands-on inventiveness in dealing with subjects like ancestry, grief, loss, and selfcare. As it happens, the dialogue between the analogue and the digital is also intrinsic to the Ancestors. Their strong, silhouetted forms are generated in an expanded structure of authorship, initially using an improvised algorithmic image generator. Burks encouraged the AI to make decisions based on a range of prompts and original artwork, as well as photos of prominent African-Americans including Malcolm X and bell hooks. He then translated these machine-made images into 3D prototypes, altering their characterization, testing their scale, essaying various materials. The work included in The New Transcendence is the first finished object from the series. Entitled Ancestors (Guardian), it is made in Corten steel and ceramic and stands some six and a half feet tall - the height of a person. It stands as both a boundary and a threshold, establishing connection across several domains: past and present, handmade and automated, figurative and abstract, sculptural and utilitarian. All these dichotomies seem to fall away when contemplating the work, in favor of a singular encompassing gesture: one of respect for the divine, bound inextricably with material possibility.
STEPHEN BURKS American, b. 1969
Stephen Burks [American, b. 1969] Ancestors (Guardian), 2023 Corten steel, glazed stoneware, silicone rubber 78 x 59 x 12 inches 198.1 x 149.9 x 30.5 cm
It may well seem counterintuitive: for an exhibition devoted to the immaterial, Najla El Zein has created a threeton seating sculpture hand carved in Ceppo, with a low-slung profile that only emphasizes gravity’s inexorable pull. The title, Lovers bench, implies a sensual, perhaps even carnal embrace, the pleasures of the flesh rather than the elevation of the spirit. As ever with El Zein, however, multiple registers of meaning – and feeling – are contained within the work. To begin with, as is also always the case with her, the portrayal of a human scenario is anything but explicit. The shape of the work is all but abstract, intimating less the idea of two bodies in contact than the more fundamental dynamic of form’s emergence from raw materiality. It is for good reason that we have chosen to present El Zein here, in The New Transcendence, rather than in the preceding show of our trilogy, The New Figuration. For the real subject of her work, as she describes it, is “what you see, what you don’t see and what lies between.”
Lovers bench follows immediately upon an epic project that El Zein completed in 2022 for Doha, Qatar. Titled Us, Her, Him, it is a vast public work, composed of 313 linear meters (about 1000 feet) of hand-sculpted limestone. Its realization was the work of many hands – El Zein worked with a large and dedicated team of skilled stone carvers in Beirut, taking a crucial role in the final shaping herself. Years in the making, the project both resulted from and also perfectly symbolized the ideal of collectivity as the true root and driving force of individual fulfilment. The work El Zein is making now bears the deep imprint of that artistic journey, not least in the way it shaped her ideas about higher purpose. Some people, it’s true, find transcendence best in solitude. But for many, it is something attained communally, whether gathered together intentionally for that purpose (in a church, at a stadium, on a dancefloor), or through a more subtle, organic process of social belonging. Losing oneself in the crowd, which is to say becoming one with it, can be just as uplifting, just as sanctifying, as any private spiritual experience. For El Zein transcendence is not a matter of surpassing the self, but rather finding a deeper sense of it, through the subjective relation to another – experienced intimately, face to face. This premise – that “transcendence is a group enterprise,” as El Zein puts it – lies deep at the heart of Lovers bench. Its pliant, intertwined form is derived from a small model in clay, a material that she prizes for its reactivity. “There’s something interesting about the pieces coming together,” El Zein says, “squashing one another and discovering expressions.” It is a clear material metaphor for the way that people interrelate, sometimes separated by voids, sometimes finding common contours. In the ideal case, congruity forms the basis for true understanding. And true understanding – in all its many varieties, different for every one of us – is what transcendence is all about.
NAJLA EL ZEIN
Lebanese, French, b. 1983
Najla El Zein [Lebanese, French b. 1983] Lovers bench, 2023 Ceppo 27.5 x 121.25 x 72 inches 70 x 308 x 183 cm Edition of 8
Why do we ever speak of a shoreline? Where the water meets the sea, we find anything but a fixed boundary. All is flux, in all dimensions. As the tide rolls in and out, natural forms are perpetually revealed, concealed, and incrementally shaped. The forces involved are of astronomical scale, but this perpetual metamorphic flow is an intimate matter for those who live by, and make their living from, the sea. Among those with that deep understanding are the people of the Shinnecock Nation, whose unceded aboriginal lands are on the eastern end of Long Island. That heritage of insight, in turn, forms a firm foundation for artist Courtney M. Leonard. For the past decade, she has devoted herself largely to a series entitled, simply, BREACH – a word that can imply underhanded betrayal (as in “breach of contract”) or on the contrary, a sudden emergence into visibility (as when a whale breaches). The ambiguity is telling, for fluidity can be seen throughout Leonard’s work, not only at the level of depiction – the wall-based work included in The New Transcendence can be read as the aerial map of a coastal zone, punctuated by fishing weirs – but also at the levels of making and meaning. It could also be an abstract painting, or a constellation. For as Leonard notes, “to understand the land and water, you also need to understand the sky.” Ceramics is, of course, a discipline born of the encounter between earth and water. Leonard has said that as she coils and interlaces the wet clay, bestowing intricate form upon it, the repetition of process prompts her to enter a meditative frame of mind, a self-transcendence akin perhaps to dreaming. When looking at the finished work, we are to some extent admitted into that same state of transport. To borrow from the late anthropologist and art critic Alfred Gell, Leonard’s cage-like structures function as traps, snaring us in a nexus of intention and reference. But if Leonard’s work is about various forms of capture – of time, space, and yes, of thought itself – she also approaches that dynamic with great care. She speaks of Indigenous techniques of aquaculture as being in a relationship of respect to nature; rather than locating weirs within migratory channels, for example, they are positioned off to one side, so as not to obstruct passage. Those fish that do get caught are, in a sense, offering themselves as sustenance; practically speaking, this method also prevents overfishing, ensuring the sustenance of future generations. This ought to be the model for how we humans treat natural resources; it ought to be the model for design.
COURTNEY M. LEONARD Shinnecock, b. 1980
Courtney M. Leonard [Shinnecock, b. 1980] BREACH: Logbook 24 | TRANSCENDENCE, 2024 Coiled and woven earthenware, acrylic paint 96 x 201.5 inches 243.8 x 511.8 cm
The titles that the British polymath Samuel Ross bestows on his creations may seem, at first, like they must have been randomly generated – the hallucinatory poetry of some artificial intelligence. They yield their meaning only gradually, and in this, they are much like the works themselves. The elegant marble bench included in The New Transcendence is a case in point. It bears the title Optimistic uncertainties solicit integration (Material Articulation) – to which you might justly say, “…what?” Take the time to parse the words, though, and they fall into place, like stones into a foundation. Optimistic uncertainty: what better way to describe the mindset of avant-garde design which by definition puts something new into the world, never quite knowing how the world might react? Ross recently developed a public seating project for the Miami Design District. When it was unveiled, he took to Instagram to spread the news. The post read, simply:
Functional Sculptures. Optimism within the public forum. Permanent. That word again: “optimism.” It jumps out, rather, standing as it does against the general tenor of contemporary discourse. Doom scrolling simply isn’t Ross’s way. Certainly, he is keenly alive to tragedies past and present, particularly those experienced within the Black diaspora – his TRAUMA CHAIR of 2020 is arguably the 21st century design object that addresses those narratives most powerfully. Yet he is also constantly wresting new, positive possibilities within the “public forum.” This is what’s meant by the rest of the title. Optimistic uncertainties solicit integration (Material Articulation): it is a statement of intent, a declaration of urgency, of insistence on finding hard-won resolution. And this leads, at last, to the question of transcendence, which arises, in Ross’s work –much as it does in many mystical traditions – though an embrace of discipline. It is not uncommon to find design so exacting as his, of course. Most product developers aspire to something similar. What’s unusual is to see such formal and technical rigor paired with a heart-poundingly intense expressive spirit. The fusion of these apparently antithetical impulses results in explosive energy, an animism that is redolent of ancient artifacts (created in a cultural atmosphere that made no distinction whatever between the artistic and functional), even as Ross’s designs also feel thrillingly futuristic. In a recent interview with the critic Spencer Bailey, he spoke eloquently of his ambition to “awaken” materials, to grant them something like sentience: “focusing the experience gives enough space for the artworks or the furniture to speak.” There is much in Ross’s work that remains open to interpretation; but speak powerfully they most certainly do.
SAMUEL ROSS British, b. 1991
Samuel Ross [British, b. 1991] Optimistic uncertainties solicit integration (Material Articulation), 2021 Fior di Pesca marble 23 x 77 x 22.5 inches 58.5 x 195.5 x 57 cm
NO MATTER: ART AND DESIGN BEYOND MATERIALITY by Salomé Gómez-Upegui The works of art I never forget speak to me on a soul level. Beyond their formal elements, they ignite something enigmatic, serving as portals to connect with a force bigger than myself. The artists and designers who made them have, somehow, listened to a higher voice within, allowing themselves to serve as channels to bring forth a unique message. From where I stand, discussing creative practice alongside spirituality is far from controversial. In the simplest terms, spirituality can be defined as the belief that our existence transcends materiality. This instinct is shared by innumerable and disparate philosophical views, ranging from animism to astrology to art itself. For many, creativity is a calling; it is spiritual belief that motivates people to create in the face of arduous circumstance, and why, as viewers, we may return to an object time and time again to find solace and meaning. Despite all this, in the context of art history, transcendence has largely met with ridicule and disdain. In The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art: Art History Reconsidered, 1800 to the Present, historian Charlene Spretnak reflects on the myriad ways in which spirituality has been treated as a “non-subject.” Writer and art historian Jennifer Higgie also writes about the exclusion of spirituality in her latest book, The Other Side: a Journey into Women, Art, and the Spirit World. Higgie sheds light on how authorities like Alfred H. Barr Jr, the first director of MoMA, wrote this subject out of modern art history completely. “Even though so many superb artists were making abstract paintings inspired by Spiritualism, he chose to ignore them—and misrepresent a historical moment.” Higgie writes. “The damage was done, his influence stretched far and wide.” No matter. At the moment there is something in the air, as spirituality is becoming a more prominent subject in the overlapping worlds of art and design. Long-dead artists with practices strongly rooted in spirituality, like the British-born Mexican artist Leonora Carrington – whose book The Milk of Dreams was the central inspiration for the most recent Venice Biennale – or members of the American Transcendental Painting Group, like Agnes Pelton, are receiving levels of praise they wouldn’t have dreamed of during their lifetimes. Attention is being paid to the work of Indigenous artists, too, with all its immense wisdom. A wide range of vibrant contemporary artists and designers, including those featured in this show, are openly speaking about their belief in something beyond objectivity, and the way that transcendence has allowed them to devise new visual languages, make sense of our world, and even engage in discussion around critical subjects such as gender, environmentalism, and racial justice. Spirituality is such a force that it’s no wonder the subject has often been monopolized by those in power. Through institutions and politics, ideas about the inexplicable have been used to generate fear, uphold dominant structures, and strip away critical rights. However, galvanized by creatives, this force can allow us to reimagine our broken realities, to move beyond the confines of reason, to dream of futures beyond what we’ve been taught is mandatory, or even possible. There is a one-of-a-kind opportunity for liberation here. Some of the most interesting contemporary artists I have encountered over the years cite spirituality as a force in their process. Nick Cave, who describes himself as a messenger delivering the deed of a higher power, comes to mind. So does Loie Hollowell, who explores themes of sexuality and fertility through paintings that draw on tantric art, and defy the limits between figuration and abstraction; and multidisciplinary artist Carolina Caycedo, who investigates environmental and social issues by engaging in a rigorous practice that she calls “spiritual fieldwork.” It does make sense that framing art and design as spiritual practices can open the door to the unexpected, the seemingly out-of-the-question. Take animism: the belief that every single thing that surrounds us possesses a unique spiritual essence. According to this interpretation of the world, the role of the artist or designer could be likened to that of a conduit in service of the spirits, bringing them into the material plane. Art and design can also be a means for spiritual evocation in ceremonial contexts, a method to invite ritual into the mundane. Forms for lighting, seating, or storage, in particular, may serve as talismans or offerings, linked to
a celestial realm. Acknowledging such a connection to a higher force can help us become more aware of the world that surrounds us, evolve toward a more conscious existence, and relate differently to the objects we decide to bring into our spaces, both sacred and profane. From this standpoint, the choice to collect art or design becomes a selection not just of a specific work, but of the energies with which we want to coexist. This is a kind of function beyond functionality, or aesthetics; it suggests that design offers unique opportunities to connect with the present, with ourselves, with each other, our collective unconscious, perhaps even with other dimensions. Looking the lens of spirituality may even allow us to commune with creatives like Andrea Branzi, who, long after abandoning their physical bodies, live eternally in the works they have brought forth. Ultimately, the incorporation of spirituality into art and design provides a depth that cannot be entirely explained, and perhaps should not be explained, but rather felt. The legendary American record producer Rick Rubin, in his book The Creative Act, puts it like this: “The spiritual world provides a sense of wonder and a degree of openmindedness not always found within the confines of science. The world of reason can be narrowed, and filled with dead ends, while the spiritual viewpoint is limitless and invites fantastic possibilities.”
The New Transcendence Curated by Glenn Adamson
Published by Friedman Benda 515 West 26th Street New York, NY 10001 Tel. + 1 212 239 8700 www.friedmanbenda.com Special thanks to Glenn Adamson. Photography by Damien Arlettaz, Julian Calero, Timothy Doyon and India Hobson. All content copyright of Friedman Benda and the artist. Published on the occasion of the exhibition The New Transcendence January 11 - February 24, 2024.