Thing-Like Being, Group Show | May 15 – 21, 2018

Thing-Like Being, Group Show | May 15 – 21, 2018

Opening reception: Thursday, May 17, 2018, 6-9 pm
Public Viewing: May 15 – 21, 2018

Thing-Like Being | Group Show: Ada Blecher, Ashley Chen, Caroline Kepley, Murielle Maalouf, Heba Malaeb

Thing-Like Being is comprised of work by Ada Blecher, Ashley Chen, Caroline Kepley, Murielle Maalouf, and Heba Malaeb.
As a group of women and gender non-conforming designers trained in a context where function was valued over feeling, they collectively respond by creating work that experiments with emotion as function.

Confronted with “thing-like being”, where the rules of the man-made world condition human behavior, they respond to the constructs of the built environment by re-envisioning it, and the objects that inhabit it, as expressions of feeling.

Through a multidisciplinary approach, the designers experiment with materiality, purpose, and form to conceive a dream-like setting. Works on view include furniture, illustration, and sculpture that reinterpret everyday objects with anthropomorphic characteristics.

Contact: info@thinglikebeing.com

 

Ada Blecher is a New York-based Designer and Artist. Combining her interest in the occult, ancient world, and gender studies with contemporary creativity. Her provoking visual language spans on sculptural and functional objects suggestion dreamlike world. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan born,  Ada grew up in Israel before moving to New York. Her multicultural background inspires her interest in varied human experiences and social norms. Ada received her BFA in product design from Parsons School of Design, for which she received dean and BFA scholarships. She currently works as production and product development coordinator at The Future Perfect design Gallery.

Ash is a Brooklyn-based creative interested by cosmic textures, whimsical pairings, and themed environments. Bored with the current standardization and understanding of product and space, her work explores play and fantasy through the marriage of sculpture and function; imagining fantastical objects that elicit sensory pleasure and delight. A silly and shy artist, her process is fascinated by the character of ritualistic objects, narratives, and material evaluation and juxtaposition. She has worked in a gamut of places unconventional to her degree and is influenced by her current involvement in puppetry.

Having a traditional background in product design, Caroline has challenged her perspective of design by borrowing from philosophy, psychology, and form-giving. As a designer and thinker, she is searching to understand the relationship between the built environment and ourselves. Her interest in objects grew from a childhood of moving where the only constant was her belongings. After experiencing powerful emotions and connections facilitated by our constructed world, she wishes to use her design methodology to approach situations otherwise overlooked.

Murielle received her BFA in Fashion Design from Parsons School of Design where she explored the role of clothing as a vehicle of expression. The designer enjoys communicating in different languages, materiality being one of them. Murielle also enjoys creating an experience where clothing is capable of telling a story without the presence of bodies, that is why she believes that her work reflects the embodiment of individual and collective reflection. As a designer, Murielle Maalouf thinks as an active observer, her work is often influenced by people’s behavior and socially constructed problems.

Heba Malaeb challenges herself to consider designed objects holistically – from manufacturing processes and labor practices to emotional experiences and poetic charges. Her work examines themes of choice, mindfulness, despair, and the everyday. She is deeply interested in what is lost in translation or wilfully abandoned between the intended use and actual use of designed objects.  When not making designed objects or secretly drawing comics about mental health, Heba is a design writer and researcher.

 

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