Beasts – Sam Chermayeff

Sam Chermayeff (New York City, 1981) is an architect and furniture designer based in Berlin and New York City. As well as running his personal practice, Sam Chermayeff Office, he also cofounded the office June 14 Meyer-Grohbrügge & Chermayeff. As a young architect, Chermayeff worked for SANAA in Tokyo for more than five years, leading projects such as the Serpentine Pavilion and the curation of the Venice Biennale. Both June 14 and his private office are engaging in a wide range of projects including furniture. Having so far realised some 50 furniture prototypes, small series and custom-made equipment, from a bathtub stand that includes a massive granite stone to a bespoke steel stool for a concert piano player, from a tiny stove to a monumental street light table, Chermayeff continues to reimagine the use of furniture pieces. Opening on the 15th of October 2021, Chermayeff presented a new body of works, Beasts, in his first solo exhibition at Side Gallery in Barcelona. The body of work is both a continuation and departure of his previous works. Each of the twenty plus works is a body that invites our bodies to inhabit specific settings. A chair is a desk, a hutch is place to put on shoes and make-up, a sofa is a place to face ones interlocutor and so on. Each piece endeavors to engender a new relationship between our diverse physicalities and our everyday lives. In some cases we use these pieces alone and in others they bring us together. We understand ourselves through our interactions with the pieces and we commune with others. Made entirely of galvanized steel, this series is taking a further step by quite literally sharpening our connection to the work. It is reflective and as such we see ourselves. Its forms come from typologies that we understand intuitively. A table is still a table, even if it is also a light that supports its reflecting surface. This reflection might make the object disappear while its function, eating, working and so on come to the fore.