ZEMLYA: A NEW COLLECTION BY SERHII MAKHNO AT LES ATELIERS COURBET IN NEW YORK
News
23.12.08
On November 8, the world-famous Les Ateliers Courbet hosted a presentation of a new collection of unique ceramic furniture and decor by ZEMLYA by Serhii Makhno. The author presented innovative and extraordinary products that he and his team have been working on for the past two years. Read more about the concept of the release, the features of the new works and the gallery itself.
THE CONCEPT
Zemlya is clay, from which Adam was created. It was used to make the first dishes and amulets. It is the origin of life, and the beginning of culture, crafts, and arts. It is also the beginning of the history of everyday life. This extraordinary collection brings humanity back to its origins.
Zemlya is Ukraine, the homeland of Serhii Makhno. It was here that the Trypillian culture emerged 7,000 years ago, giving rise to unique ceramic wonders. For all these centuries, despite the destruction of entire cultural centers, ceramic art in Ukraine has been passed down from generation to generation, albeit in a whisper, with ancient authentic techniques and secrets. They were collected, revived, and embodied in this collection by the master’s team, adding their own inventions and know-how.
Zemlya is our planet, the home of all humanity as a single cultural and historical organism. This collection is a reflection on its development through objects. The deep pre-industrial past is read here as well as the distant postmodern future. The artist offers his vision of the essence of the interior – natural and ecological. This is a visionary collection about eco-futurism, green technologies, and the design of the new millennium.
“For me, Zemlya is the beginning and the end. It’s where we come from and where we return to. And even though in English these are three completely different words, for me it’s the same concept” – Serhii Makhno
UNIQUENESS
ZEMLYA‘s peculiarity is that the handmade objects have large and intricate shapes: massive two-meter-long lamps are shining art sculptures; one hundred-kilogram biomorphic chairs resemble unprecedented beasts; long ceramic benches and tables fascinate with their perfect monolithicity.
Thanks to innovative techniques of working with clay, the craftsmen overcame the basic property of the material – the attraction to solid rounded forms. And they created something unique – a combination of flat, tubular, and curved structures. This is quite unusual for ceramics.
In addition, the ceramists used their own inventions in glazing, texturing, coloring, sintering, oxidizing, and restoring surfaces. They experimented with the atmosphere and temperature in kilns, with the combination of many production techniques in one object. Special attention should be paid to the studio’s know-how, the QUADROPODS artistic blocks, which became the basis for a significant part of the collection. MAKHNO studio masters Slavko Odarchenko, Olexandr Yarovyi, and others put a lot of passion into turning extraordinary design ideas into real unique art objects.
GUIDE
ZEMLYA consists of several parts: furniture, decor, lighting, mirrors, and bathroom.
FURNITURE:
alive and wild, as if they hid among the coziness of the house to become home. These beautiful giants impress visually and attract tactilely. Thanks to their intricate textures, you want to touch, hug, lean against, look at, and interact with them. This is furniture for rooms with a lot of space. They do not require any decoration. And most importantly, they are extremely comfortable and pleasant.
The sturdy armchairs from the DUTA, PYL, and SYAIVO series seem to be carved from a solid piece of rock, which guarantees an explosive visual effect in the interior. But to create SHELEST, ZMIY, KOLYSKA, and other chairs, we invented a unique technique of manufacturing and combining thin tubular components, which cannot be repeated without knowing the secrets of baking. The VALUN table is unique in that it has an almost two-meter-long perfectly straight ceramic tabletop, which is unusual for a material that tends to be rounded.
The ULAMOK and MUL accent benches surprise with their monolithic nature, while the KVARTS table, on the contrary, is a masterful combination of many parts. The creativity and rhythm of the VUSHKA armchair and the mysterious TYMCHASOVE mirror are worth mentioning separately, as these works are works of art that set a new standard for object collection design. The same can be said about the intricately designed PRATSYA double table or the incredibly decorated SPOKYI rounded bed.
LIGHTING:
ceramic lamps are a well-known superpower of Serhii Makhno, but in the new collection he has surpassed his previous inventions. The incredible STUPA lamp can reach two meters in height. The wonderful QUADROLAMP is a story of skillful decoration with futuristic QUADROPODS blocks, for the first time a ceramic lamp is not a solid one, but as if assembled from a construction set. And here are the stars of the evening – fantastic lamps from the BA–VOV–NA series, which look like living buds blooming with honey light. For their manufacture, a special technique of ceramic cracks formation was invented, which imitates natural tectonic processes, as if from the heart of an exploding planet, the radiance breaks through them. The addition to the KHMARA series deserves special mention, as the iconic shape is finally presented in the form of a floor lamp.
DECOR:
It looks like a fantastic ceramic construction set. The amazing QUADROPODS are a new invention of the studio that rethinks the methods of working with interiors. These six-pointed ceramic blocks can be used as wall tiles, furniture components, support elements, or as independent decorative pieces. Now you can create entire interior worlds just from these blocks. For example, the QUADROWALL art wall and the creative BIBLIOTEKA shelving.
MIRRORS AND WASHBASINS:
The PISOK line of ceramic washbasins consists of single and double, long and short washbasins, depending on your bathroom. Unique glazing and painting decorations are used here. And for the most demanding aesthetics, we made BANIAK, an authentic vessel inspired by pre-industrial primitiveness.
The mirrors are represented by the OKO series, as well as separate BULKA and BUBLYK, which have artistic components and go beyond the usual design solutions, as their decor uses a combination of different clays and shapes, from tubers to QUADROPODS pieces. The most difficult and skillful thing here is to merge the mirrored core and the sintered figured decoration.
ABOUT LES ATELIERS COURBET
Les Ateliers Courbet is a New York-based design gallery known for its unique focus on the work of contemporary artisanal artists who carry on centuries-old traditions.
Founded in 2013 by Melanie Courbet, the gallery has gained international recognition among private collectors, interior designers, and cultural institutions. Today, the gallery presents more than 50 traditional crafts handed down from generation to generation by respected artisans from around the world, including Tadao Ando and the Venini glassblowers, Nepalese weavers and Frank Gehry, Aldo Bakker and silversmiths from the Vienna Silver Manufactory, and now Serhii Makhno.
We invite all beauty lovers to visit the ZEMLYA exhibition by Serhii Makhno at Les Ateliers Courbet gallery until January 10, as well as to view the new collection on the MAKHNO studio website.
Have a great time!
