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Athens Design Forum & Les Ateliers Courbet are pleased to present an Online Viewing Room of Peter Speliopoulos’ CHTHONIC for 5VIE Design Week. Evoking a visual language strengthened by the primordial gods of the ancient Greek underworld, the symbolic pieces transform into archetypes of renewal and healing. Speliopoulos’ background in costume and fashion design instills a static and impenetrable material, stoneware pottery, with the grace and energy of a choreographed piece. Through the process of making, Speliopoulos disrupts notions of symmetry and a central axis to give form to “secret histories, antiquities and the passing of time.”

Thin slabs of ceramic, resembling the gesture of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, become appendages of organic and sprawling shapes adhered to the outer walls of the vessels. The layered surfaces composed of brush-applied slips and glazes are fired to create eroded, cracked landscapes. By referencing the geological formations of sand beds and earth fissures across Greece and Upstate New York, the tactile ruminations of the artist manifest the soil as a resilient medium for collective identity.

LES ATELIERS COURBET

Les Ateliers Courbet is a New York-based design gallery noted for its distinct curatorial focus dedicated to the ongoing craftsmanship mastery and design legacies carried-on by the contemporary artisans and centuries-old manufactures it represents. 

While the gallery’s exhibitions program highlights the time-honored techniques behind an objet d’art, its adjoining salons reveal a permanent display of timeless design pieces – bringing together contemporary creations and sought-after pieces culled from the archives. In conjunction, the gallery cultivates the longstanding dialogue between revered ateliers and artists, introducing collaborations among which Venini’s glass blowers and Tadao Ando, Nepalese weavers and Frank Gehry, or Aldo Bakker and the silversmiths of Wiener Silber Manufaktur.

Established in 2013 by Mélanie Courbet, the gallery was born from the desire to share a deep appreciation for master-craftsmen’s ethos and works of art that embody artisanal dexterity and cultural heritage. Rooted in Courbet’s extensive travels and collaborations with artists, designers and artisans around the world, the gallery is a paean to the painstaking work of today’s rarefied master-craftsmen.

Since its opening, Les Ateliers Courbet has garnered international recognition from a clientele of private collectors, interior designers and institutions alike. Today, the gallery represents over 50 traditional crafts passed on by long lineages of esteemed artisans from around the world, including marquetry, woodcraft, ceramic and glasswork, weaving and metalsmithing. ateliercourbet.com

5VIE DESIGN WEEK

5VIE was born in 2013 as a territorial marketing project, aimed at giving visibility and attractiveness to the homonymous area in the historic center of Milan: an area rich in history and culture, where – among the remains of imperial Rome, early Christian basilicas and Renaissance courtyards – you can still find artisan workshops of the highest level, as well as refined boutiques and art and design galleries. 5VIE’s Design Weeks, focused on cross-disciplinary design practices and collectible design, have made the district to become an international benchmark in the field. 5vie.it

For Press Inquiries, Interviews,  and VIP Invitations:

Katerina Papanikolopoulos, Founder

info@athensdesignforum.com

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