23 October 2018

Designers and creative agency owners Sagmeister & Walsh investigate 'Beauty' from various angles at new exhibition at MAK Vienna (opening today)

In some hours, the new exhibition 'Sagmeister & Walsh: Beauty' will open at MAK (Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art) in Vienna (runs until 31 March 2019). Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh are designers and owners of the New York-based creative agency 'Sagmeister & Walsh'. For the exhibition, Sagmeister & Walsh are researching universal structures such as symmetry for perceiving an object as 'beautiful'.

The angles from where the creative duo looks at beauty spans over hundreds of years and throws light on fields like architecture or product design. To mention only two hot spots of the multifaceted exhibition: At the Sensory Room (picture right), visitors are invited to enter a space which appeals the senses visually, with sounds and a selection of scents which are considered 'beautiful'. The installation was designed together with the team of Swarovski; the crystals on view at the outer surface of the cube were set after Sagmeister & Walsh's ornamental design.

The second hot spot is the Color Room (image below) developed in cooperation with interior fabrics manufactory Backhausen. Such as the name of the room suggests, visitors will be invited to experience colors and the influence of light on the appearance of - commonly considered beautiful, 'colorfulness'.

fig. above: View at the 'Sensory Room' (2018) by Sagmeister & Walsh in cooperation with Swarovski at the MAK Design Lab.
fig. below: View at the 'Color Room' (2018) by Sagmeister & Walsh in cooperation with Backhausen at the MAK Design Lab.
The cube and installation are part of the upcoming 'Sagmeister & Walsh: Beauty' exhibition at MAK Wien (24 October 2018 - 31 March 2019; opening today on 23 October, 7 p.m.). Photos: © MAK/Aslan Kudrnofsky.

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