Mango has always valued its relationship with culture.Once again this year, the fashion brand is present at the Salone del Mobile.On the occasion of the 58th edition, Mango is collaborating with Apartamento Magazine and the North American artist Sam Stewart to create unique window displays in one of its stores in the city.With this collaboration, Mango is reaffirming its commitment to culture and continuing with the project of the season, #MangoNewVoices, which aims to give a voice and promote new and emerging talent and highlight the power of culture in the community.
The temporary exhibition will be available from 8 to 24 April in the window displays of Mango’s flagship store in Milan, located in Corso Vittorio Emanuele.
The concept
For the week of the Salone, the North American artist Sam Stewart offers us this capricious and almost absurd work to inhabit the store’s window displays, entitled ‘Lightworks’.The principle reference for this collaboration is ventilation and the pipe network which is commonly found on the sidewalks of New York City, where Stewart currently lives and works.The curved and tubular form which passers-by can observe is the final point of a much larger and more complex network of pipes that is hidden from view, buried underground.
The title of the work is a play on the English word ‘waterworks’:the pipes that make up the water supply network of a city.The term also refers to the act of crying and its tears.Consequently, the idea of ‘Lightworks’ suggests the supply or expression of light which travels through a network of pipes.
For Stewart, the pipes have a comical appearance, as if they were a Sottsass totem.‘Lightworks ’, the title of the work, combines tubes and a substance which emerges from within, light.
The artist
Sam Stewart (1988, North Carolina) is a New York based artist who works with the functional design of furniture and household objects.The form and colour of his creations are the result of the emergence of elements his their more immediate present and his daily life in New York, such as the drainage pipes or subway seats, iconic designs of the XX century, 3D modelling software and objects which evoke his memory of childhood perception.Stewart’s studio implements design in the most meticulous way possible, by paying special attention to artisanal work and the use of tools of professionals in this field.Stewart’s aim is design which embraces simplicity, exaggeration and anecdotal encounters using designed objects.