A sofa that looks like a pile of painted shapes. A marble console that seems to sag under its own folds. Misha Kahn’s new show at Friedman Benda in New York, a misha kahn furniture exhibition titled All Intensive Purposes, makes hard materials act like cloth.
All Intensive Purposes marks ten years of collaboration between the artist and the gallery. The misha kahn furniture exhibition, at 515 West 26th Street, brings together furniture and sculpture that sit between craft and digital experiment.
Familiar objects change character throughout this misha kahn furniture exhibition. Striped plywood takes on tree-like forms. Copper is worked to resemble loosely knitted fabric. A winding installation called a lazy river circulates through the room.
Why this misha kahn furniture exhibition feels different
Kahn has moved between physical craft and digital work for much of his career. He has produced furniture from improvised molds and through virtual reality. His earlier pieces often had the exaggerated, gravity-defying look of objects designed on a screen.
This time, he describes a shift toward something more immediate. “I think, the past handful of years, I really was doing so much work conceptually, digitally,” he told designboom. “I think this show was really sort of a studio move.”
Working partly from his studio in the woods, Kahn says he wanted the new pieces to feel “really tactile.” Collage and material experiment now sit at the center of his process.
Kahn’s wool upholstery treats textile as a sculptural material, a thread worth following into how traditional weaving shapes modern living rooms, where cloth again defines the space.
Painting first, then rebuilding it in wool
The upholstered pieces show that shift most clearly. Their rounded forms seem assembled from large painted fragments, with irregular cushions that overlap and then pull apart. The process started with a painted composition.
Textile studio JG SWITZER translated that painting into wool. The team then used the patterns to reconstruct the original arrangement across the upholstered surfaces. Kahn says conventional upholstery forces a maker to work within the limits of existing fabrics. Here, he could shape the form and its graphic treatment at the same time. “I’ve never gotten that control over the surface,” the artist says.
The frames follow the same logic. The team welds them in the studio so the shapes can flow into one another. “I find that the most satisfying part is sort of the air between the cushions, because we’re so used to seeing a continuous form,” Kahn explains. Some cushions look loosely attached, which raises a practical question: which parts can actually move? Extra pillow elements stretch the composition further.
A lazy river in the gallery
The most unusual addition to this misha kahn furniture exhibition is a miniature lazy river. It winds through the gallery beside a large video projection. The idea came to Kahn quickly. “I thought, I don’t know why, I think like the beach,” he recalls. “I was like, this show needs a lazy river.”
The video shows an abstract sequence in which materials are repeatedly handled and transformed until they yield a kind of juice. Kahn wanted it to feel like making an object: doing something, taking it apart, and putting it back together again and again.
He also designed a set of plastic bottles for the installation. He used the manufacturing process behind commercial water bottles to produce doubled forms. The bottles circle continuously, which gives physical shape to the exhibition’s title. The phrase shifts toward the intensity of making, even when the destination stays uncertain.
Where furniture ends and sculpture begins
Kahn has spent much of his career between furniture design and sculpture. His pieces keep a clear link to domestic objects, but their odd proportions and complex surfaces complicate how they might be used. In Throws of Passion, a substantial marble console is carved to look like draped fabric. Its folds seem almost weightless, even though the material is stone.
Asked whether his work has moved toward sculpture or toward functional furniture, Kahn treats both as parts of one world. “I feel like I always just wanted to feel like it’s coming from one world,” he says. “Objects really communicate an idea because I think you understand them as, like, oh, this is what’s in the house, and this is what goes there.”
He values the freedom that sculpture gives him. “I have really enjoyed making sculpture because it just doesn’t have some of the same kind of requirements,” he explains. For Kahn, the category matters less than the work itself. “I always feel like it should have both. All of my favorite historical figures did both.”
The misha kahn furniture exhibition makes the case that a sofa and a sculpture can share the same logic. Each starts with a material, a surface, and a question about how it will behave. In Kahn’s hands, the answer is often a object that is both familiar and hard to place.
For another take on blending craft with digital imagery, see Jonas Hejduk’s blurred digital rugs and tiger skins, which turn traditional textiles into something unexpectedly new.
Project credits:
- Artist: Misha Kahn, @mishakahn
- Gallery: Friedman Benda, @friedman_benda, 515 West 26th Street, New York, NY
- Photography: © Ryan Petrus, @ryan.michael.petrus
- Source: designboom
Sources & Links
Source: designboom.com
Frequently asked questions
Where is Misha Kahn’s All Intensive Purposes exhibition being shown?
Misha Kahn’s All Intensive Purposes exhibition is at Friedman Benda in New York, at 515 West 26th Street. The show marks ten years of collaboration between the artist and the gallery.
How were the wool upholstered pieces in Misha Kahn’s show made?
The process began with a painted composition, which textile studio JG SWITZER translated into wool. The team then used those patterns to reconstruct the original arrangement across the upholstered surfaces.
What is the lazy river installation in Misha Kahn’s exhibition?
The lazy river is a miniature installation that winds through the gallery beside a large video projection. Kahn also designed plastic bottles for it, using the manufacturing process behind commercial water bottles to produce doubled forms.
What is the marble console called Throws of Passion?
Throws of Passion is a substantial marble console carved to look like draped fabric. Its folds seem almost weightless even though the material is stone.
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