Her highly recognizable graphic touch has transformed a furniture icon into an ultra-contemporary work of art. We’re talking about Shantell Martin, an artist with roots in London who lives and works in New York, and is one of today’s most advanced visual and multimedia creators. Her distinctive approach involves lines, drawn with black ink markers on a white background. She applied this technique in a live performance on Camaleonda, during Miami Beach / Art Basel.
Shantell Martin x B&B Italia
The “chameleonic” origins of the sofa – designed by Mario Bellini in 1970 and reissued after 50 years with a contemporary language – have been investigated and reinterpreted precisely by starting with the architect’s first source of inspiration, a mixture of the chameleon (an extraordinary animal capable of adapting to its environment) and the wave.
“For me, this was a natural starting point and something that I felt fundamentally to be a core aspect to my work as an artist – says Shantell Martin. – So I wanted to create a calm and immersive experience around not only this iconic object, but also around this idea of functional adaptability and nature.”
The artist has used lines as a means to discover the interaction of social processes with physical spaces, her inner life and the provisional character of the world around us. Any surface becomes an opportunity to create a stream of consciousness traced with a marker and represented by stylized figures, words, faces and gestures.
Shantell Martin x B&B Italia
The installation will be on view until 3 January at the B&B Italia flagship store, 4141 NE 2nd Ave, Miami Design District.
