FRIEDMAN BENDA AND APARTAMENTO PUBLISHING RELEASE FIRST BOOK OF THREE-PART SERIES ON INDIVIDUAL DESIGN COLLECTIONS

Today, Apartamento Publishing and Friedman Benda announce their collaboration and release of Faye Toogood: Assemblage 6: Unlearning, the first book in a three-part series that focuses on individual collections by international designers and, just as importantly, the ideas that gave them life.

This new series of books captures the raw moment of inception behind a designer’s collection. Faye Toogood: Assemblage 6: Unlearning features 448 pages of the original rough-edged maquettes and ensuing artworks part of the designer‘s latest collection, Assemblage 6: Unlearning, which was exhibited last fall at Friedman Benda.  The book also features a short story by Man Booker-nominated author Sophie Mackintosh and an essay by curator and writer Glenn Adamson. Upcoming titles feature designers Misha Kahn and Najla El Zein.

Faye Toogood’s newest collection started with almost 300 maquettes: chairs, lamps, stools, or daybeds made of wire, cardboard, tape, and canvas, or the everyday materials she keeps in her studio. But having lined up these rather crude, almost childlike maquettes, the collection, in essence, was decided. Seventeen were chosen to be scaled up to life-size works, and the next two years were dedicated to replicating, precisely, the primitive naïveté of the original pieces at full scale and with artisanal materials, pushing the theme of ‘unlearning’ to its rough-hewn but illusive conclusion.

This book provides an immersive journey through the original maquettes and their occasional passage into the real world of furniture/sculpture, playing with the sense of dissimulation evident in the final artworks, or the fact that some objects are not always what they seem at first glance. British author Sophie Mackintosh opens with this idea in her short story, while the book closes on an essay by independent writer and curator Glenn Adamson, who ultimately provides context for the body of work as a whole.

The object itself plays with this underlying theme, too, as an industrially produced paperback with artisanal finishes and cover artwork that reproduces an original composition by Faye Toogood. Made in collaboration with Friedman Benda, this is the first of three books in a new series by Apartamento Publishing; additional titles focused on designers represented by the gallery will debut later this year.

Faye Toogood: Assemblage 6: Unlearning is available online for purchase here. 

About Friedman Benda

Friedman Benda identifies and advances key narratives that intersect contemporary design, craft, architecture, fine art, and cutting-edge technological research. The gallery promotes synthesis between leading creative thinkers and makers by creating opportunities to advance new connections within the global design community. Friedman Benda is committed to a critical view of design history. We aim to expand the design dialogue from its established sources, exploring perspectives that have previously been marginalized. Spanning five continents and four generations, Friedman Benda represents a roster of seminal established and emerging designers, as well as historically significant estates. Since 2007, the gallery’s exhibitions, publications and collaborations with institutions have played a vital role in the development of the contemporary design market and scholarship. For further information please visit www.friedmanbenda.com and the gallery’s Instagram @friedman_benda and YouTube channel.