Samare: for the love of canadiana
More : Domison, Furniture deisgn, Samare
Overlapping with the SIDIM this year, Montréal-based avant-garde furniture designer Samare will be part of the group show Hochelaga, mon amour at the Domison design space on St-Laurent. The exhibit is a curated commercial showcase for emerging designers, opening tonight, Thursday, May 26.
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For the show, Samare will be showing their somewhat uncanny Curling Table, made with an actually curling “rock” from their Légende du pays d’en haut collection. The smart, sought-after design team’s work is shown in New York, Bologna, and Milan, and will soon be part of a show in Beirut.
Based in Montréal, with an office in Milan, Samare combines the intellectual side of design with the wit of sculpture. Much like Dean & Dan Caten from DSQUARED, Samare plays with Canadian iconography, turning an item we find banal or tacky into something contemporary and skilful. Made with powder-coated steel, raw hide, and nylon weaving, their design aesthetic plays with “warm” and “cold” features that characterize canadiana.
Asked what Samare’s mission statement was, Patrick Mereim de Barros speaks to their blending of craftsmanship and industrial design. “It gives the impression that we are rejecting the clean lines and surfaces of commercial design. The idea it to put forward the savoir-faire of Canadian materials and make it into something new, deconstructed and reconstructed.”
In Toronto by Ministry of the Interior and New York by Matter Matters, Samare has gotten the critical acclaim of design boutiques that appear to the recherché tastes of Milan and Bologna. There’s an edgy side to Samare that situates it as part of design art, which is part of it playing “catch-up” with other design centres in the world. Mereim de Barros is always surprized how Scandinavian vintage furniture is so popular, and which originates from a certain inferiority complex in Canada, which has failed to develop a culturally indigenous design aesthetic.
As for their recent successes, Mereim de Barros points to how the Capitaine Chair was sold in auction at the house of Pierre Bergé; while the très osé Paddle Bench, in red and blue was gobbled up by Chinese and Latin American design-watchers who saw how it transcended the wintery inspiration and was perceived as flashy outdoor furniture for warm climates.
Hochelaga, mon amour, featuring works by Samare, opens tonight at
Domison 4117 boul St-Laurent www.domison.com
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