Richard Meier Light is a collaboration of three partners: Richard Meier, Ana Meier and Hervé Descottes. The collection of ten sconces, pendants and lamps elevates the art of lighting with simplicity, geometry and lightness. Timeless in appearance yet forward-looking in approach, Richard Meier Light designs use premium, tactile materials like glass and Corian, and industrial craftsmanship for creatively expressive pieces. The collection, says Ana Meier, “brings the power of architecture to a smaller scale. I was moved to take recurring themes and forms in Richard’s work and translate them into sculptural objects that are interacted with everyday.” Descottes, the founder of world-renowned lighting design company L’Observatoire International, has illuminated the pieces bringing the form, positivity and artful balance to life. “Architecture has the power to inspire, to elevate the spirit, to feed both the mind and the body,” says Richard Meier. “With this collection, we have distilled this feeling into objects that touch people inside the spaces where they live, work and visit.”

London-based architect, furniture designer and artist Spencer Fung’s “The Last Wilderness” paintings and mural celebrate California’s majestic tress. “I visited the Sequoia National Forest just after a winter snow storm. I was overwhelmed by the serene beauty, the magnificence and the resilience of the forest. I painted with bold strokes in Chinese ink and soil, mixed with melting snow, to connect with the nature surrounding me. My paintings are emotional and abstract. I became fascinated by the fluorescent yellow-green wolf lichen that thrives on trunks and glaciers boulders among the giant sequoias; it is the wallpaper of the forest. Wolf lichen is strong and self-sufficient and lives for thousands of years, longer than the sequoias. I like to imagine that its vivid color has evolved as a way of survival to deter predators, and I see this lichen as a symbol of survival for us all in our turbulent times. ‘The Last Wilderness’ reveals the responsibility I feel to share the incredible raw beauty I found in the Sierra Nevada, and the vulnerability of nature to human activity.

John Wigmore first debuted paper lighting sculptures at RALPH PUCCI in 2014, inspired by the minimalism of Richard Serra and Sol Lewitt. He wanted to create objects with an ethereal quality. His fascination with natural materials led to light sculptures in wood, and so it was a natural evolution that brought him to clay. “I started making bowls for myself and I wanted to see if I could push it to be a body of work,” he says. The result is Wigmore’s signature square and rectangle forms executed in clay as classic table lamps and sconces. “I was inspired by the clarity and restraint of Luis Barragan’s architecture, the sensitivity of Japanese tea bowls, and Californian ceramic artists,” says Wigmore, “which I captured using the natural materials of clay, ceramic glazes, Japanese paper and light. I have created a new vision of classic designs that resonate beyond the objects themselves, literally and figuratively.” These are all hand-built, not slip-cast, rolled out individual slabs of clay pieced together almost architecturally. “It’s a beautiful process of something natural that still has mystery to it. I am using the kiln and the glaze chemistry to be a part of the creative process, with custom glazing and firing levels; however I might envision the design, there’s the randomness of what will emerge from the kiln.”

JOHN KOGA - FURNITURE / LIGHTING / SCULPTURE

NINA SEIRAFI - FURNITURE

DAVID STOREY - FINE ART

NOVEMBER 2018

Honolulu sculptor John Koga is known for his whimsical creations in marble and plaster and has been part of RALPH PUCCI for over a decade. Koga was immediately attracted to the new outdoor furniture designs by Patrick Naggar and Paul Mathieu, made in the RALPH PUCCI mannequin factory on 18th Street in New York. As with the mannequins, each of these plasterglass designs starts as a clay model. Koga relished the opportunity to get his hands into clay, which he hadn’t worked with since preparing for his Master’s degree, visiting the studio over several weeks to create and edit prototypes. “I love this partnership, that we were able to create in this proprietary material, with the same feel of my plaster. It’s mindboggling. When I run my hand along the shapes of the lamps, I have the muscle memory - these are how a John Koga form feels.”

Nina Seirafi is a New York based interiors and furniture designer with a distinguished international clientele and multi-disciplinary focus. Designed with a profound imagination, Nina’s concepts are lyrically inventive, not derivative. Fundamentals of balance and tailored, seamless details are integral. A sophisticated material sensibility employs natural materials with complex personalities—unpretentious, precious, and mysterious. Nina’s work engages a cultivated elegance, a refined sensitivity to architectural detail, and an inspired appreciation of art. Resembling sculpture, each initiative is defined by meticulous proportion, discipline, and clean lines.

Originally from California, David Storey has been living and working in New York since 1980. Ralph Pucci invited David Storey to be the first artist to paint a mural on the exterior walls of the Los Angeles gallery ahead of the artist’s November 2018 exhibition. David shares, “I was talking with Ralph a while ago about a project I was working on, fourteen mosaic murals for a subway station in Brooklyn, [and] almost immediately Ralph suggested that we consider a mural project for Los Angeles. And I thought that was a terrific idea. I was intrigued working with the four long rectangles. There were opportunities to connect a sequence of images that was really moving, really engaged, active.” The resulting mural is a celebration of the natural beauty and energy of Los Angeles.

Photography by Antoine Bootz