Following a one-year hiatus, Collective Design has announced its latest edition, a partnership with Frieze for the art fair's May 7-10 edition in New York. Just don’t call it a comeback. As Collective founder Steven Learner tells AD PRO, the fair’s trajectory has all been according to plan: “From my standpoint, it is completely expected that we would evolve, change, shift, expand, and contract, because that’s the nature of our industry.”
The new collaboration marks a full-circle moment for the fair founder. When Learner, an architect, way first toying in 2013 with the idea of launching a contemporary art and design show—the kind of creative outlet that, at the time, was difficult to come by outside of Basel or Maastricht—he reached out to Frieze co-founder Amanda Sharp for guidance. The dialogue eventually led Learner to debut Collective Design that May, concurrent with Frieze and focused on 20th- and 21st-century vintage and contemporary design works.
As any curator, collector, or advisor knows, the art and design landscape in New York has evolved immensely since then. New York's design festival, which consisted of 12 events over seven days in May when Collective first launched, has expanded to what's essentially a whole month of activity, tallying nearly 500 events in 2018. Even outside of the NYCxDesign events, the collectible design scene in New York is flourishing. “There was an explosion in the amount of attention that design was getting in New York at that time, and what I kept hearing from people in the design community was, ‘It’s too much,’” says Learner. With the fair’s collaboration with Frieze, Learner hopes to minimize the hassle for attendees, giving them a one-stop shop for fine art and design.
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For the show, Collective Design is partnering with Libby Sellers, a London-based gallerist and the former curator at the city's Design Museum, to curate “Color and Production: From the Atom to the Void.” The exhibition showcases color through the lens of historical developments and technology, from pigment converted to ink to the 21st century’s reliance on chemicals. The concept will manifest in a 1,500-square-foot showcase with works by Dan Flavin, Anni Albers, Bruno Minari, and Formafantasma, among others. “It’s the first time Frieze is presenting design, and we take that as a responsibility. We want to curate an exhibition that has weight and gravitas and a real point of view,” says Learner, who tapped Mexican industrial designer Emiliano Godoy to design the exhibition. Confirmed design galleries include Friedman Benda, Giustini Stagetti, Urban Architecture, Adrian Sassoon, Galerie Kreo, Volume Gallery, Donzella, Lobel Modern, Established & Sons, and Gabrielle Ammann.
Whether or not the collaboration between Frieze and Collective Design will be a long term one is still to be determined. But Learner confirms that it won’t be the last of such shared partnerships—those that let him focus more on curating and less on “worrying about everything from catering to ticket sales to bathrooms.” He envisions Collective playing more of a guest role in its next chapter—"show up to the dinner party with my bottle of wine, leave before the dishes are done,” as he describes it. And as always, bringing something inspiring to the table.
