Showing art and design, wife and husband New Zealander artist Francis Upritchard and Italian furniture designer Martino Gamper often collaborate, bringing some intriguing dialogues between art and design. I have fist seen the collaboration of the two when in 2012, they created a public housing project in London’s Hackney district. Now the two collaborate in a joint exhibition in NYC Anton Kern Gallery, blending sculpture and furniture, and proposing contrasting approaches to three-dimensional objects, that of the artist and that of the designer. For the exhibition, the two have created an environment of Gesamtkunstwerk, ‘total work of art’ where the objects, bronze sculptures, tables, chairs, ceramic bowls, pots, and lamps, all complement each other in a conversation between art and design.
