Henzel Studio to Exhibit Experimental Art Rugs With Twentieth in L.A.

Coinciding with both companies' 20th anniversaries, Los Angeles design gallery Twentieth will present an exhibition in partnership with Henzel Studio at The New, Twentieth’s auxiliary exhibition space on Beverly Boulevard.

In addition to representing the Swedish rug brand that specializes in upending conventional floor coverings, Twentieth owner Stefan Lawrence and artist Daniele Albright have designed a capsule collection for Henzel under their Videre Licet banner that debuts this month. One of the pieces, based on Videre Licet's Meltforms glass light box series, will be on view at The New, alongside 14 other limited-edition carpets from Henzel Studio Collaborations. The show opens on June 20 in association with the L.A. Design Festival’s offsite programming.

With guidance from curator Joakim Andreasson, a Helmut Lang alum and current L.A. resident who launched the program with Henzel founder and creative director Calle Henzel in 2012, The New will feature Henzel’s ongoing work with prominent contemporary artists. (For a few weeks as a teaser, a black Helmut Lang unorthodox rug adapted from Lang's Behind resin sculpture has been displayed on the Twentieth showroom floor in the bow truss building that Neil M. Denari Architects reimagined for Lawrence in 2014.)

"Our mission was really about challenging what a carpet could be, because carpets haven't been challenged," Andreasson explains about the evolving project. All Henzel Studio creations are handmade in Nepal and are certified by GoodWeave International, a nonprofit entity that enforces fair labor standards and also supports local community programs. This effort overall is "about working with contemporary artists and embracing this new medium within their body of work," Andreasson says. "So they would [have to] create something that feels comfortable within their practice."

Adds Albright: "There's also a cultural shift with artists doing more design-type work. It's becoming more...not only acceptable, but exciting and encouraging."

With this particular mix, as with other Henzel exhibitions, "We try to pick artists who are in dialogue with the others. It's about finding an interesting group of artists who each contribute to the bigger picture," Andreasson notes. In consultation with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Henzel transformed details from an obscure Warhol maquette booklet with Marilyn Monroe details from one of his time capsules. (Andreasson specifies that "when we work with an estate, we try not to do the obvious thing.") Three designs from Henzel's Andy Warhol: Maquette collection sit in proximity to carpets by artists such as Marilyn Minter, Richard Prince, Anselm Reyle, and Jack Pierson.

Most of the items have been shown in previous domestic installations, while works by L.A.-based Jwan Yosef, Lawrence Weiner, Olaf Breuning, Bjarne Melgaard, and Carsten Höller will be seen for the first time in the U.S. And much as with most material goods that happen to be highly Instagrammable, social media cannot fully capture the complex colors, pile heights, dimensions, textures, and myriad ways with which Henzel Studio uses fine traditional craftsmanship to explore tensions between fine art and functional objects.

"Let's do something new, and keep a fresh mind and break some new barriers," Andreasson states. "That's what's intriguing."

Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest