Store Front
March 11–May 16, 2021
Beginning March 11, Demisch Danant invites three creatives to design its storefront windows on historic W 12th St in the West Village. Editor Dung Ngo, artist David Hartt, and floral designer Emily Thompson will each apply their unique design perspective on structure, form, and architecture to provoke the senses, instigate curiosity in passersby and contribute to the cultural experience of the street.
New York's storefronts constitute the city's vernacular architecture.
(New Yorker, 2009)
They are identifying fixtures of the neighborhoods they serve. 30 W 12th St was the home of legendary S.F. Vanni, the oldest Italian bookstore in America. Neighbors still remember the pale blue curtains that covered the storefront from 1940 – 2016. One can still see the visual hallmarks indicative of Demisch Danant’s storied past, such as its door’s brass hardware and its letter box.
April 21 – May 16
Spring has a raw mode, it sucks up all the winter's melt and spits it back out in cascades or tiny bold bursts. Our installation is a study of this moment in the emerging landscape.
–Emily Thompson
Emily Thompson, floral designer, with the rough hand of nature, draws the eye to the infinite glory of the living world with piercing contrasts and juxtapositions of materials.
March 11-28
Dung Ngo, Editor-in-Chief of AUGUST: A Journal of Travel + Design, conducts architecture and design research through travel and writing.
Traveling is, itself, the experience—but often a memento from the trip jolts and amplifies the memory. Souvenirs is composed of objects that I have collected over the past decades of travel: local crafts, vintage flea market finds, and especially photo books—all things that continue to bring me closer to the far-flung places that I hope we all will be able to visit again soon.
–Dung Ngo
The Souvenirs installation includes a collaboration collage, Trip Itinerary, by the illustration artist Rob Wilson, who also provided the hand painted graphics.
March 31 – April 18
David Hartt is an artist whose work explores how historic ideas and ideals persist or transform over time. For the window he is including prototypes and process works that he lives with at his home in Philadelphia. The assembled pieces offer a diverse array of forms and materials: A vacuum formed planter, wooden bucks for blown glass works, a carpet fragment from the Johnson Publishing Company Headquarters in Chicago, a silk and wool jacquard tapestry sample, and a table carved in Africa, based on the altered form of a Tony Smith sculpture. Also included in the gallery is a collection of Hartt’s ephemera; generated from working as an artist for over 20 years, it includes postcards, posters and multiples.
The display titled Ephemera is a reflection on an artist’s process and the status of objects conceived for one purpose and used for another; finding ways to become useful or souvenirs of the past, what remains at the end of the day.
On view from March 11 through May 16, 2021, Store Front continues Demisch Danant’s exploration of the intersection of architecture, design and art.