The inaugural Winter Show at Exhibition The Barn: challenging the idea of the Hamptons ‘off-season’
An inspirational refuge, the Winter Show offers much-needed warmth and comfort during a challenging moment. Curated by Elena Frampton, the show highlights photography, a Modernist rug from Doris Leslie Blau, a custom floral “chandelier,” and, in partnership with with Manhattan-based gallery Friedman Benda, expressive and experimental seating. A custom, double-height marigold curtain contains the scene within a volumetric color study that doubles as a metaphoric warm embrace. Works by emerging and established photographers including Craig McDean, Jesse Frohman, and Joshua Olley, present counter perspectives within the space. Frohman’s large-scale desert still life immediately draws the viewer’s eye with intense color and contrast, while works by Joshua Olley center on highly-personal themes of time, place, and liminal states. An omnipresence of curvilinear shapes complements the winding curtains, and abounds in a selection of one-of-a-kind ceramics, absurdist seating by the Campana Brothers, a Marcel Wanders lounge chair, and most strikingly in the Modernist circular area rug from Doris Leslie Blau, in honor of the showroom’s name-sake industry titan. An aesthetically complex moment of contradictions, brought to life through art and design.
