Eliana Willis

Brazil has been a center of the global design scene for decades, thanks to the prolific and groundbreaking output of the Campana brothers. The duo rose to prominence during the 1990s with often whimsical designs that defied formal, aesthetic, and material norms. 
Brazilian designer Fernando Campana poses for pictures at his studio in São Paulo, Brazil, on July 4, 2016. (MIGUEL SCHINCARIOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Working across mediums, Humberto and Fernando Campana took the design world by storm. Notable concepts include the loose cotton rope Vermelha Chair—produced for Italian manufacturer Edra—and the Favela Chair (1991), now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, created from wood offcuts not unlike the dwellings that define those urban areas. Weaving plush stuffed animals—Disney and KAWS characters—into overflowing armchairs became their calling card. 
Campana Brothers, Bolotas Chair, Bicolor (2018). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
The studio distinguished itself with postmodern humor and pastiche—as well as responsibility and resourcefulness, upcycling materials before the term was coined. Campana Studio was one of the first practices to incorporate narrative in its work; the idea of imbuing objects with stories has since come to define much of the collectible design market. 
The duo has been a staple of New York, in particular Friedman Benda, ever since the gallery’s inception in the 2010s. From February 15 through April 15, the gallery is honoring Fernando—who died last November at age 61—with a comprehensive retrospective at its new Los Angeles outpost, during Frieze.
Campana Brothers, Noah Bench (2017). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
As tributes from prominent figures such as MoMA senior curator of architecture and design Paola Antonnelli prove, he was beloved and revered by many. Antonnelli helped bring the duo international acclaim with a dedicated exhibition in the late 1990s.
Milan-based writer and Design Miami curatorial director Maria Cristina Didero said recently, “Estúdio Campana has always attributed several meanings to the word ‘transformation,’ converting ordinary objects into precious ones. [Fernando] deeply loved his work and together with his brother Humberto, conceived it as a mission to help other people through creativity and fun.”
Campana Brothers, Bubble Wrap Chair (1995). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
The “Cine São José” exhibition surveys a significant amount of work produced during the studio’s first 15 years, as well as never-before-seen pieces. The title refers to their hometown cinema, where films allowed them to dream an auspicious future.
Campana Brothers, Yanomami Chair (1989). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
On view is the rare Yanomani Chair (1989), part of the seminal “Desconfortáveis” (“Uncomfortable”) collection, in which Humberto and Fernando forged squiggles into iron using blowtorches. The Bubble Wrap Chair (1995) was created by layering sheets of the packaging material.
Other pieces hail from the “Sushi” series—Sushi Sofa (ca. 2002) sold for over $50,000 at Sotheby’s in 2020—and the collaged “Detonado” series (in production since 2013). Through the clever elevation and integration of cheap, everyday materials, the duo created otherworldly designs and imbued them with a healthy dose of color and levity.
Here are more of the duo’s fanciful designs from the Friedman Benda show.

Campana Brothers, Bolotas Chair, Apple (2020). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
Campana Brothers, Detonado Chair (2013). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
Campana Brothers, Galactica Sofa (2020). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
Campana Brothers, Jalapão Chair (2022). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
Campana Brothers, Noah Mirror (2017). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
Campana Brothers, Ofidia Side Table (2015). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
Campana Brothers, Pirarucu Chair, Pink (2015). Photo: Fernando Laszlo. Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Estudio Campana.
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The number of works on show is far from huge and the exhibition space may seem to be disproportionately spacious, and yet the Rijksmuseum has set the perfect stage for a highly anticipated, once-in-a-lifetime Johannes Vermeer exhibition—the largest ever “family reunion” of the Dutch master’s paintings.
Opening to the public this Friday, February 10, “Vermeer” at the Netherlands’s national museum of art and history presents a total of 28 out of the 37 known paintings by the artist, making the show the most complete survey of the Old Master staged in his home country.
It reunites many works that have been scattered around the world, including seven paintings that have not been back to the Netherlands in 200 years. They hang near other greatest hits that have remained in the Netherlands, including The Milkmaid (c. 1658-59) and The Little Street, both housed at Rijksmuseum, and three from the Mauritshuis in The Hague, an institution best known for being home to the enigmatic Girl with a Pearl Earring (1664-67).
Critics and journalists admired Vermeer’s View of Delft during a press preview at exhibition “Vermeer” at Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Photo: Vivienne Chow.
Rijksmuseum’s general director Taco Dibbits said the new exhibition is the largest since the show that ran from 1995 to 1996 by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, which brought together 21 works. “It was quite an impossible dream to have a monographic exhibition of Vermeer. But it appeared not to be impossible when we heard that Frick Collection was about to renovate. We thought, this is a chance. It’s now or never,” Dibbits said during Tuesday’s press preview, which welcomed around 150 international journalists and critics.
“Vermeer,” an assembly from 14 museums and private collections from seven countries, includes an unprecedented loan of three works from the Frick Collection, which are being shown outside of New York for the first time: Mistress and Maid (c.1664-67), Girl, Interrupted at Her Music (c.1959-61), and Officer and the Laughing Girl (c. 1657-58).
Saint Praxedis (1655), said to be based on a similar picture from around 1640 to 1645 by the Florentine artist Felice Ficherelli, is loaned from the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo.
The museum’s curatorial team, as well as conservators and scientists, embarked on an intensive research journey in collaboration with other prestigious institutions, applying the latest technologies in an attempt to resolve the mysteries behind Vermeer’s arresting images and storied paintings and decode his painting techniques. But one of the most difficult mysteries to solve was how to stage the show in Rijksmuseum’s huge halls. “How do you exhibit 28 paintings of which most are relatively small, and depict very intimate spaces?” Dibbits noted.
The Milkmaid featured in exhibition “Vermeer”. Photo Rijksmuseum/ Henk Wildschut.
The solution was not to closely group them, but to offer as much space as possible for each painting. The museum worked with French architect and designer Jean-Michel Wilmotte to design all ten galleries of the museum’s Phillips Wing. The works are divided into 11 thematic sections tracing the artist’s roots, and searching for insights into his life and paintings. The exhibition space is so roomy that sometimes a large gallery features only one or two paintings. Galleries are decorated with classy floor-to-ceiling velvet curtains in different colors to separate the show’s themes.
But these small works are set to have a huge impact: more than 200,000 tickets have already been pre-sold as of Tuesday. “This has never happened before,” said Dibbits. Due to the size of the works, the director added that his team is limiting the amount of tickets sold to ensure that the public has a good viewing experience. The museum also declined to comment on any additional security measures in place given the ongoing attacks at European institutions by climate activists.
Installation view of Mistress and Maid at “Vermeer,” Rijksmuseum. Work on loan from the Frick Collection, New York. Photo Rijksmuseum/ Henk Wildschut.
Rijksmuseum’s spokespeople did not disclose how many visitors they were expecting in total, nor did they disclose the limit of tickets to be sold or the maximum capacity the galleries could accommodate. The institution has extended its normal run-time for an exhibition to four months for the Dutch Golden Age star; it. will extend its opening hours to 10 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays throughout the exhibition period, until June 4.
In spite of the all-star lineup, there has been at least one dispute. On view is a contested work, Girl With a Flute (c. 1665-1675)—the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. has said that the small painting may not be a genuine work by Vermeer. Nevertheless, it is attributed to Vermeer on the wall text, and hangs in the show side-by-side with another painting Girl with a Red Hat (c. 1664-67).
Such a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition is likely to make history globally, and is an especially poignant show for the Dutch public. “It’s like an unprecedented family reunion,”  co-curator Pieter Roelofs.
“Vermeer” will be on view form February 10 to June 4, 2023.

Girl with a Red Hat and Girl with a Flute at “Vermeer,” Rijksmuseum. Photo Rijksmuseum/ Henk Wildschut.
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A major exhibition that explores the history of slavery during the Dutch colonial period will travel to the United Nations (U.N.) headquarters in New York this month for a four-week display.
Originally conceived and staged at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in 2021, “Slavery” spanned 250 years of the Dutch colonial history, from the 17th to the 19th century, considering personal and real-life stories from those who lived during the period.
The showcase at the U.N. headquarters’s visitors lobby will run from February 27 to March 30 as an adapted version of the original show in the Netherlands, presented with a new title “Slavery. Ten True Stories of Dutch Colonial Slavery.” On March 29 and 30, there will be a series of talks reflecting on the issue, which still haunts the world today. An adapted form of the display will travel U.N. offices globally for the next two years.
“Recognizing the continuing impact of slavery on world history is of great importance. We are very grateful to the United Nations for drawing attention to this important subject through the exhibition,” Taco Dibbits, general director of the Rijksmuseum, said in a statement. The New York show is partly supported by the Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the U.N. and the Dutch diplomatic mission in the United States.
“Tronco,” a symbol of the suppression of the colonial slavery system, on show at Rijksmuseum’s “Slavery” exhibition. Courtesy Rijksmuseum.
Set against the backdrop of the Dutch’s controversial past in Brazil, Suriname, and the Caribbean, as well as South Africa, Asia, and the Netherlands, it tells the personal stories of 10 individuals who were either enslaved or made a profit out of the slavery system, as well as those who resisted against the system. One of the central objects in the show is a tronco, the Portuguese word for tree trunk, a wooden foot stock used to restrain enslaved people by clamping their ankles in the holes.
The show at the Rijksmuseum was among the first of its kind to dive into this part of history, and the effort was applauded by critics when it opened in 2021.
“It is without any doubt one of great achievements of the exhibition that its makers dared to present such new critical perspectives,” University of Amsterdam’s Laura van Hasselt and Paul Knevel wrote in their review in journal The Public Historian. “The narrative has changed from a proud ‘this is us in our Golden Age’ to an uncomfortable ‘this is who we don’t want to be anymore.’” The original show is still available for viewing online.
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The late Canadian artist Rodney Graham is getting a posthumous spotlight at Hauser and Wirth’s Somerset outpost. 
After a breakout turn representing Canada at the 1997 Venice Biennale, the conceptual artist, who passed away last fall from cancer at 73, became known for his dryly humorous films and photographs in which he often cast himself in various elaborate guises and scenarios. The show, on view through May 8, includes a series of large-scale lightbox photographs that thrust the viewer into a number of Graham’s richly imagined worlds. Filled with textured detail they bring a vibrancy to otherwise banal scenes; an overworked chef taking a cigarette break, an unkempt hermit jubilating in front of a ramshackle cottage. 
The exhibition also nods to other dimensions of Graham’s practice, which stretched to encompass adept painting, sculpture, photography, and musical work. Called “Getting It Together in the Countryside,” the show borrows its title from Graham’s 2000 LP of the same name, a jam session of improvised guitar recordings—fitting for the gallery’s rural British location, which Graham visited to perform at its opening in 2014. 
Rodney Graham, Betula Pendula Fastigiata (Sous-Chef on Smoke Break) (2011). ©Rodney Graham. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Throughout his career, Graham seamlessly inhabited his various characters. “It may be a burden to reinvent oneself every time,” Graham said, “but it makes things more interesting.”
The centerpiece of the exhibition is Graham’s The Four Seasons, a late body of work executed between 2011 and 2013. The series was inspired after Graham’s fellow artist and friend David Batchelor remarked that two images of characters—a drywaller and a chef—enjoying smoke breaks, reminded him of summer and winter. This spurred Graham to make two more companion pieces, another smoke break, this time of a Hollywood actor/director on a technicolor film set in the 1950s to represent spring, and a fourth, more meditative take on a kayaker on the Seymour river for fall, which he joked was his chance to take an “oxygen break.”
The exhibition also dips into other aspects of his practice, opening on one of his sculptures, an innocuous-looking door propped against a wall. It could be any old screen door—they are pretty ubiquitous fixtures—but this particular one happens to be an exact replica of Elvis Presley’s door at Graceland. Graham was tickled when the object was offered up for auction alongside other Elvis memorabilia in 1999 and ran with it, deciding to cast the replica in solid silver.
One example from his “inverted trees” series following the artist’s early experiments with the camera lucida, a large-scale pinhole camera that dates back to ancient times, is also on view.
“Getting It Together in the Country” is far from a complete overview of Graham’s polymathic practice, but it is one of the last exhibitions of his own work that he had a hand in organizing, and aptly showcases him as a unique artist, masterfully aloof, and still winking from beyond the veil.
“Rodney Graham: Getting It Together In the Country” is on view at Hauser and Wirth Somerset through May 8.
Rodney Graham, Main Street Tree (2006). ©Rodney Graham. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Tom Van Eynde.
Installation view, “Rodney Graham. Getting it Together in the Country,” Hauser & Wirth Somerset, 2023. ©Rodney Graham. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Ken Adlard.
Installation view, “Rodney Graham. Getting it Together in the Country,” Hauser & Wirth Somerset, 2023. ©Rodney Graham. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Ken Adlard.
Rodney Graham, Paddler, Mouth of the Seymour (2012-2013). ©Rodney Graham. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Installation view, “Rodney Graham. Getting it Together in the Country,” Hauser & Wirth Somerset, 2023. ©Rodney Graham. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Ken Adlard.
Installation view, “Rodney Graham. Getting it Together in the Country,” Hauser & Wirth Somerset, 2023. ©Rodney Graham. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Ken Adlard.
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