SIDE GALLERY

Fondazione Dries Van Noten dedicates an ongoing series to the artists and works on view, an invitation to look more closely at the ideas, materials, and making behind each piece.

The first is Nifemi Marcus-Bello Nifemi Marcus-Bello, a Nigerian designer whose practice challenges Western centric narratives and champions a locally rooted and community driven approach. His research led work spans public seating systems to limited edition pieces that interrogate material histories. On view is The Daybed (2026), a form cast entirely in bronze, inspired by the Agadaze, the traditional bed of the Tuareg people of Niger.

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Courtesy by the artist and Side Gallery
Images by Erik Benjamins

Lina Bo Bardi
Bowl Chair, 19551

Side Gallery is pleased to introduce two exceptional period examples of Lina Bo Bardi’s iconic Bowl Chair, recently brought together within the gallery’s collection and research program. Preserved from the original production period, these rare historical pieces provide a valuable opportunity to revisit one of the most significant furniture designs of the twentieth century. Their rediscovery contributes to the ongoing reassessment of Lina Bo Bardi’s design legacy and offers fresh insight into a work that occupies a pivotal position within the history of modern furniture, Brazilian modernism, and postwar design culture.

The Bowl Chair occupies a singular position within the history of modern furniture design. Conceived by Lina Bo Bardi in 1951, shortly after her arrival in Brazil, the chair challenged many of the assumptions that had defined modern seating during the preceding decades. At a time when furniture designers frequently emphasized formal rigidity, technical precision, and standardized postures, Bo Bardi proposed an object that privileged freedom of movement and individual comfort. The design consists of a spherical upholstered shell resting within a simple metal ring structure, allowing the seat to rotate and adapt to the user’s position. The result is a chair that does not dictate how one should sit but instead accommodates the changing needs and gestures of the body. This seemingly simple innovation anticipated later developments in ergonomic and informal furniture by several decades.

International House of Japan, Tokyo

The International House of Japan completed in 1955 in Tokyo’s Roppongi district is one of the defining works of postwar Japanese modernism. A private members club for intelectuals, scholars and diplomats it was designed collaboratively by architects Kunio Maekawa, Junzo Sakakura, and Junzo Yoshimura. The building was conceived as a center for dialogue, culture and exchange of ideas during Japan’s reconstruction after World War II. Its architecture became a symbol of a nation reopening itself to the world while redefining its cultural identity through modern design.
The project united three names who had each contributed to the development of modern architecture in Japan. Maekawa and Sakakura brought direct experience from the atelier of Le Corbusier in Paris, while Yoshimura contributed a refined understanding of traditional Japanese spatial culture. Their collaboration produced a building that fused international modernism with Japanese concepts of proportion, landscape, and craftsmanship.
Rather than imposing itself upon the site, the building is carefully integrated into a historic garden centered around a pond dating back to the Edo period. Long horizontal façades, ribbon windows, cantilevered roofs, and terraces create a continuous dialogue between architecture and nature. The composition reflects modernist principles while preserving the Japanese tradition of framing seasonal views and blurring the boundary between interior and exterior space.
The interiors are equally significant. Natural materials, particularly wood, temper the rigor of concrete, steel, and glass. Built-in furnishings, custom joinery, and carefully selected furniture were designed to complement the architecture rather than compete with it. The influence of Japanese craft traditions is evident in the precision of details, the tactile quality of surfaces, and the restrained elegance of the spaces. Furniture by leading postwar Japanese designers and manufacturers helped establish a new design language in which modern forms coexisted with traditional notions of comfort and scale.

NOT FAR BY KODAI UJIE
4TH JUNE - 20TH SEPTEMBER 2026

SIDE GALLERY is pleased to present Not Far, a solo exhibition by Kodai Ujiie, on view from 4 June through 20 September 2026 at the gallery’s Barcelona space on Carrer Llull 109. Featuring a new body of ceramic works, the exhibition explores the productive space between emergence and resolution. The title refers to a condition of proximity: forms that appear close to becoming vessels, surfaces that seem on the verge of settling into a final state, objects that occupy a moment just before completion. Rather than presenting ceramics as fixed outcomes, Ujiie approaches them as material propositions, shaped through experimentation and continuous transformation.
Throughout the exhibition, making is understood as an open-ended process of negotiation between intention and material behaviour. Ujiie works through repetition, testing and adjustment, allowing each piece to evolve through a sequence of decisions rather than according to a predetermined image. Cracks, distortions, accumulations and irregularities are not treated as deviations from an ideal form but as evidence of the object’s development. The resulting works retain a sense of movement, carrying within them the traces of trial and error that generated them.
Kodai Ujiie (b. 1990, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan) is a contemporary ceramic artist whose practice expands the language of ceramics beyond traditional notions of vessel making.
Working primarily through hand-building techniques, Ujiie creates asymmetrical forms that appear organic, unstable and constantly evolving. His vessels frequently evoke geological formations, biological structures or natural processes of growth and erosion. Through layered glazes, fractured surfaces and tactile textures, he emphasises clay’s capacity to record time, pressure and intervention, transforming the material into a register of physical experience.

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Designed by Antonio Attolini Lack in 1959, Casa Gálvez forms part of the architectural development of El Pedregal de San Ángel in Mexico City, an urban project established over the volcanic lava fields created by the eruption of the Xitle volcano approximately 1,700 years ago.

The house reflects the principles that defined the Pedregal movement after the original urban vision promoted by Luis Barragán: integration of architecture with the basaltic landscape, use of endemic vegetation, and spatial adaptation to the irregular topography of the lava terrain.

Attolini Lack, who collaborated with Barragán during the early development of Pedregal, developed an architectural language characterized by geometric clarity, controlled natural light, and the use of regional materials including volcanic stone, concrete, wood, and plaster. In Casa Gálvez, the volcanic substrate was preserved as an active component of the site rather than removed, following the environmental and urban strategies that distinguished Pedregal from other modernist developments in Latin America during the mid-20th century.

The residence belongs to a broader period of Mexican modern architecture in which domestic space was conceived through climatic response, landscape continuity, and structural rationalism. Large openings, patios, and transitional spaces allowed natural ventilation and visual continuity between interior and exterior areas while responding to the climatic conditions of southern Mexico City.

Today, Casa Gálvez remains part of the architectural legacy of El Pedregal, an area internationally recognized for its contribution to modern residential architecture and landscape integration.

The Only True Protest is Beauty
Fondazione Dries Van Noten
Grand Canal, Venice

Side Gallery is proud to participate in The Only True Protest Is Beauty, now on view at Palazzo Pisani Moretta in Venice. Curated by Dries Van Noten with Geert Bruloot, the presentation explores beauty as a force of provocation, reflection, and transformation, drawing from the words of American songwriter and activist Phil Ochs: “In such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty.” Here, beauty is understood not as mere aesthetics, but as an intense encounter capable of unsettling and opening space for new perspectives.
Within this framework, Side Gallery presents works by designers Nifemi Marcus-Bello, Virginia Leonard, Hyeokjin Jung, and Xavier Mañosa, whose practices embody craftsmanship as both expression and emotional language. Their works move across design and material experimentation, engaging in a dialogue
that questions conventions and expands the boundaries of contemporary design.
Installed within the historic spaces of Palazzo Pisani Moretta, the presentation unfolds as a sequence of encounters where objects, architecture, and narrative intersect.
In this setting, works converge in relation to one another, drawn together by affinity or held in productive contrast, revealing
the human intensity of making.

For its presentation at Raritas, Side Gallery explores a dialogue between historical Japanese design and contemporary creative practices, highlighting the enduring relationship between craftsmanship, material sensitivity, and innovation.
By presenting iconic figures of modern Japanese design alongside emerging contemporary voices, the project reflects on the evolution of aesthetics rooted in tradition while remaining open to experimentation.
To expand this narrative, the gallery introduces a selection of Milan-based designers whose practices embody a dynamic and expressive approach to contemporary design. This encounter creates a bridge between two distinct yet complementary cultural landscapes: the refined, process-driven philosophy of Japanese design and the vibrant, forward-thinking energy of Milan.
The presentation ultimately proposes a shared ground where heritage and contemporaneity converge, generating new perspectives through the exchange of ideas, forms, and creative forces.

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For its presentation at Raritas, Side Gallery explores a dialogue between historical Japanese design and contemporary creative practices, highlighting the enduring relationship between craftsmanship, material sensitivity, and innovation.
By presenting iconic figures of modern Japanese design alongside emerging contemporary voices, the project reflects on the evolution of aesthetics rooted in tradition while remaining open to experimentation.
To expand this narrative, the gallery introduces a selection of Milan-based designers whose practices embody a dynamic and expressive approach to contemporary design. This encounter creates a bridge between two distinct yet complementary cultural landscapes: the refined, process-driven philosophy of Japanese design and the vibrant, forward-thinking energy of Milan.
The presentation ultimately proposes a shared ground where heritage and contemporaneity converge, generating new perspectives through the exchange of ideas, forms, and creative forces.