BLOOMS ETERNAL - MARCIN RUSAK’S FLORA CABINETS

May 9, 2024

Within the carved metalwork  of Polish artist Marcin Rusak’s modernist furniture, textural decaying flowers and leaves contrast smooth clear, black, and white resins. In the Flora Cabinet 176, part of his collection with Twenty First Gallery, he cast discarded plants in translucent black resin to resemble a Flemish painting scene where foliage floats below the water’s surface.

 

For her clear resin and acrylic pieces, Irish artist Sasha Sykes captures ephemeral moments from the Wicklow mountain landscape by embedding wildflowers, algae, and fungi foraged at different stages of their life cycle. She uses tweezers to place smaller stems in 3D molds; her Blooom! screen includes hydrangea and delphinium.

  • Featured Artist

    • Featured Artist

      Marcin Rusak

      Marcin Rusak was born in 1987 in Warsaw, Poland. He holds undergraduate degrees in humanities from the University of Warsaw and in art from the Eindhoven Design Academy in the Netherlands, as well as an MA in Design Products from London’s Royal College of Arts. He currently works out of London and Warsaw. With an experimental practice that merges contemporary art and design, Rusak draws inspiration from theoretical research and philosophical inquiry as well as from explorations of material processes in the studio. Influenced by his family lineage as a third generation descendant of flower growers after his father and grandfather, he has developed signature techniques using plant flora as a striking decorative element within his work, preserving flowers and leaves in resin which are fused seamlessly into his thoughtful modern pieces. Each piece is unique, conserving the ephemeral shades and textures of petals and leaves, which float suspended in beautiful contrast with the smooth white, black or clear resin encasing them. Rusak is also adept at creating minimal designs in metal, carving materials to their bare elements to create elegant, rugged forms. In addition to his exquisite design furniture, Rusak produces artworks on silk using colorful flower pigmentation, resulting in simple and delicate pieces marked by bright natural abstract formations. Still in the emerging phase of his career, Rusak is already the recipient of numerous industry awards including the Mazda Design Award, the Architectural Digest Design Award, the Wallpaper Design Award, and the Perrier-Jouet Arts Salon Prize, among others. He was recently selected as a part of #AD100. He has held solo exhibitions at Twenty First Gallery in New York as well as at galleries in London, Miami, and Brussels. His work has also appeared in a number of group exhibitions at prestigious venues in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, including the V&A London, the London Design Festival, Design Miami Basel, Design Days Dubai, and Japan’s Toyama Museum of Art and Design.