"XXIst Century Man," 21_21 Design Sight, Tokyo, March 30, 2008-July 6, 2008
Literature
XXIst century man, exh. cat, 21_21 Design Sight, Tokyo, 2008, p. 55 Nendo: Thin Black Lines + Blurry White Surfaces, exh, cat., Phillips de Pury & Company, London, 2010, passim
Catalogue Essay
Japanese collective Nendo conceived their “Cabbage Chair” in 2008 for curator Issey Miyake’s “XXIst Century Man”, an exhibition commemorating the first anniversary of 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT, a museum designed by Tadao Ando in Tokyo’s Roppongi district. Miyake invited Nendo to create a chair using the byproducts of the pleated fabric for which the fashion designer is renowned. The resulting work was a roll of paper and fabric which, when pealed back along a central seam, transformed into a chair.
In addition to several white examples, Nendo produced four unique colored “Cabbage Chairs” for the exhibition including a red, an orange, and a green example as well as the present blue. A later edition of 40 white, black, and mixed black & white “Cabbage Chairs” were exhibited the following year at Friedman Benda, New York.
“Cabbage Chairs” are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Museum of Arts and Design, New York; the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.
Phillips would like to thank Akihiro Ito of Nendo for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.