DESIGN MIAMI / BASEL 2019: Remember by Olga Engel

If there is something heavenly about Olga Engel’s imagination, perhaps it’s because her name, in German, means “angel.” The artist’s childhood memories—her mother’s voice calling to her as she plays outside, raindrops tapping on window panes, a large tear running down a doll’s cheek— inspire and enable her to create a playful universe of contemporary and fundamentally dreamlike forms. A rather tactile design emerges from this ethereal world, including simple and fun pieces aching to be touched! A compromise between precision and the unexpected is based on the idea that a piece can only be beautiful when underpinned by emotion. Engel’s style is understated, elegant, and joyful. Her work comprises cheerfulness and minimalism, only yielding to a certain type of figurative representation imbued with irony and nostalgia.

Located in the North Marais, Paris, and Megève in the French Alps, Armel Soyer is devoted to twenty-first century decorative arts. The gallery proposes a contemporary and global approach, enforcing a savoir-faire that is sometimes forgotten. A generation of craftsmen and artists have joined an ambitious challenge and creative adventure; recognized and emerging talents are united in a common search for inspiration, quality, rarity, and excellence. Armel Soyer aims to reharmonize contemporary design with the arts and crafts, reinjecting ornamentation, the richness of natural materials, and adding poetry to contemporary design.