DNA is a collaborative project between Friedman Benda, Galerie kreo, and Salon 94 Design

As demonstrated recently through several articles, the current period is conducive to reinventing practices and institutions. If galleries used to live on meetings at fairs, presentations, and exhibitions, COVID-19 has been giving them a hard time for almost a year now. Faced with the shaking of all certainty, three of the world's largest design galleries, Friedman Benda, Galerie kreo and Salon 94 Design teamed up to create the DNA platform, a common online display to overcome the lack of visibility of their respective designers. Discover a collaborative project that serves both design and ethics.

Friedman Benda, Misha Kahn, Rasta Mirror...

Looking for collaborations

It is in a difficult global context such as that of the pandemic that the expression "unity makes strength" makes sense. Indeed, all players in the sector are impacted by the impossibility of participating in trade fairs, exhibitions and design weeks, major events in the dissemination and knowledge of each other's work, whether galleries, curators, designers, artists, collectors and interior architects. This is why even the big names in the sector, those for whom business usually goes well and whose reputation precedes them, have also felt the need to open up to collaboration in order to multiply the possibilities and certainly survive the period whose ins and outs remain obscure.

For example, New York galleries Friedman Benda and Salon 94 Design, collection design pioneers, as well as the Galerie kreo, which have historically been present on the market since 1999, have joined forces and created DNA, a collaborative platform where it is possible to admire, search and buy online unique or limited edition pieces from the collections of the three galleries. Combining their preferred styles and the designers they represent, the galleries offer a website entirely dedicated to contemporary design, demonstrating the ability of these objects and pieces of furniture to exist next to each other.

Kwangho Lee, Red Orange Chair, Salon 94 Design

Beyond the exhibition: the welcome intellectualisation of design

Another big name has also joined the experience of this new platform: Glenn Adamson, a curator, writer and historian based in New York City - and former Director of the Museum of Arts and Design - has written specifically for the project DNA 28 comparative essays related to the 28 designers represented (and more than 80 design pieces virtually on display!). In the manner of a deciphering of trends, the American curator offers his keen eye on the various themes underlying the material presented.

Thus, short essays such as Electric Dreams, Pattern Recognition, In the Roundetc., deliver the keys to design, its past and its future, to connoisseurs as well as to those curious to learn more. These well-written essays legitimize the selection of the pieces by Friedman Benda, Salon 94 Design and Galerie kreo.

"This project, DNA, it is far more than the sum of its parts. Three of the world's leading design galleries have come together, intertwining their programs into a single, generative presentation: a triple helix of creativity. It's an impressive gathering, and an instructive one. DNA provides a generous cross-section of where design is today, and some of the pathways that have brought it here. What gives it greatest value, though, is the context it provides to each of the designers, by placing them alongside their peers.

Individually, the 84 included works are striking, innovative, and provocative by turns. They need no help from anyone to communicate meaning. But seen three by three, in 28 different configurations, they are seen afresh. Even the most replete and self-sufficient of them become part of something bigger, as the groupings accumulate into a single shared story about design."

Glenn Adamson