‘Static Bubbles,’ Exhibition by Nendo

This year, Tokyo-based design firm nendo has celebrated its tenth anniversary by doing what nendo does best : quietly but surely going about their work. This may not sound like a way to mark a successful decade, but the fruits of nendoís labour were anything but ordinary. It is this combination of thoughtfulness and caprice, hidden within minimalism of form and an unusual attention to process and detail, that make nendo what they are, and that characterizes the new work shownat Carpenters Workshop Gallery.

One keyword for understanding nendo’s work is ‘lightness’. Of the new work shown in this exhibition, the farming-net objects (2012) play with the visual perception of physicality. They claim space for their strange geometric forms but hover between perceptibility and imperceptibility, materiality and immateriality. Stronger than organdy but lighter and more flexible than wire mesh, the farming-net objects merge structure and form, object and shadow. They are absolutely functional yet prefer to suggest in their three-dimensional clouds the space that a container or vase might occupy.