It’s 10 p.m. in Miami and dozens of Art Basel attendees are standing in line in the rain.
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what is actually drawing this crowd to Arca’s Wynwood showroom is the introduction of Gravitas, the company’s new 18-piece collection with AD100 architect Vincent Van Duysen, a set of heroic pieces carved from solid stone. Unique pedestals, benches, tables and chairs populate the interior of the showroom, which has been spectacularly staged with a backdrop of black curtains and a looping soundtrack of rain.
In this setting, Van Duysen’s pieces seem totemic, like something out of time…2001: A space odyssey– as monoliths, ready to be adopted by a collector. “The pieces are very physical,” says Van Duysen, who notes that the works are meant to straddle the line between objets d’art and sculptures. The Belgian designer is not precious about these pieces, as precious as they are. (The prices of the items for sale vary according to the design and the stone, but suffice it to say that they are for serious hobbyists.) He points out that in a column-type work niches can be used for books or objects.
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While Arca’s 2022 collaboration with Kelly Wearstler played on the designer’s idiosyncratic glam aesthetic, Van Duysen’s is elemental and focuses heavily on texture. In line with the brutalism and minimalism for which he is known, the works experiment with some of the stone supplier’s complicated carving techniques. “He was certainly very interested in the challenge of seeing what he could come up with,” says Van Duysen. “I wanted to have this proposal between rough, hand-hammered exterior surfaces versus highly polished pieces on top or inside.”
The designer points to several modern and contemporary sculptors as informants for the collection: Roni Horn, Isamu Noguchi and James Turrell. “In architecture, light is like a brick,” says Van Duysen. “It’s about the relationship with the pieces, nature and humanity.”
For Arca, the partnerships with Van Duysen and Wearstler act as showcases for the Mexican stone supplier’s extensive material archive and production capabilities. In the case of Van Duysen, the Arca team was challenged to create a set of furniture simultaneously across different continents, time zones and language barriers: the pedestal being created in Europe needed to have the same rough details as the tower being produced in Mexico. .
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“In each of these pieces you have about 50 hours of work,” says Gerardo Cortina Wiechers, Arca’s CEO, who adds that the collection was one of the most complicated projects the company has undertaken so far. But one thing, at least, seems to have been easy: “It was not a complicated position for us to work with Vincent. We always admire his work.”
The collection is important to Van Duysen as it represents the designer’s first foray into artistic furniture. Having previously teamed up with Molteni & C, Zara Home and other commercial outfits, he was able, with Gravitas, to create unique objects.
Arca sources and cuts its stone all over the world, and for Gravitas they specified neutral tones, opting for Porfido and Carrara marble from Italy, Cafesina from Spain and lava stone from Mexico. Like wine, each stone has its own sense of terroir: some register as warm and smooth when polished, others are cooler and smoother. Given its composition entirely in stone, Van Duysen’s works can be used indoors or outdoors. But Van Duysen is not too deterministic: “I didn’t want to have specific destinations in mind.”
