15 authors show in Madrid their works between art and design

Material experiments, surprising shapes and functional deconstructions are on display at the Galería 6mas1 in Madrid until 14 March 2019. The collective exhibition curated by Andrés Izquierdo for the second edition of the Madrid Design Festival brings together fifteen designers who explore the blurred boundaries between art and design. The exhibition is called “Functional art” but we could also call it “Disfunctional design”: the objects were not designed to be comfortable, efficient or functional; they were not made in the first instance considering their usefulness or their potential to generate an economic return.

A common feature of all the works – which have very different compositional processes, materials and results – is their uniqueness and craftsmanship in opposition to the serialisation of design, that tends to flatten taste and homologate behaviour, emptying the meaning of design. “These objects contain everything I don’t want in my life. They can be ugly or beautiful, rigid, uncomfortable, ironic, unusual or grotesque, but please, God free us from their unbearable tastelessness,” says Izquierdo.

The aim of the designers on display is rather to trigger critical reflections and give shape to a complex, chaotic and contradictory reality, questioning the meaning that home furnishings have in our imagination and in our daily lives. According to the curator, the invited designers “try through their furniture to transform users day by day, year by year, from the most intimate place in human life: the home.”