Exhibition By Joris Laarman

Bridge Table, 2010

Showcasing his work from the last five years, Joris Laarman�s exhibition, entitled simply Joris Laarman Lab, is currently on display at Friedman Benda in New York.

The show was designed to exhibit what the designer describes as �a world of new options on the edge of fiction and reality, between efficiency and the sometimes non-efficient joy of experimenting. It should give a peek into our future laboratory/production space�Some of the works are stepping-stones, others further developed bodies of work. All of them are collaborations with engineers, scientists and craftsman from who we are learning a lot�.

The pieces themselves are starting points for groups of research that could develop each idea further. This work-in-progress nature of the work is translated to the exhibition design, as the work is displayed against a backdrop of life-sized drawings and notes sketched onto the walls.

Highlights of the exhibition include the Bone chair family, an older series that now includes a table among other pieces, and most interesting � the Asimov chair built by robots and the Half Life lamp. The idea behind the Bone chair range was to generate constructions using the exact same principle as bone growth first developed by Claus Mattheck and further developed by Opel in Germany.

The Asimov prototype chair miniature installation shows the possibilities of folding � and in the future cutting and welding � curved crease plate materials. A very efficient process, this technique is an alternative to expensive injection moulding for creating products in large quantities.

Half living organism, half non-living material, the Half Life lamp was born on February 23 in a Dutch tissue culture laboratory. When in healthy conditions, the lamp began to glow. The cells responsible for the emission of light in the lamp are originally from a Chinese hamster. In 1957, the cells were isolated from a hamster�s ovary and kept alive as a cell culture for research purposes. In the 1990s this cell line was enriched with the fire fly�s luciferase gene. Ever since, these hamster cells glow in the dark in presence of luciferine.

Joris Laarman Lab
Mar. 4 - Apr. 10, 2010
Friedman Benda
515 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001