Arik Levy – focusing on people

Arik Levy, this year’s Guest of Honor, has been called both a scientist and a poet. He will be creating a relaxing lounge that encourages human contact in the Stockholmsmässan entrance hall. This is the eighth time that Stockholm Furniture Fair and Northern Light Fair have invited a well-known international designer to create a lounge space.

Designer, technician, artist, photographer, filmmaker: Arik Levy’s talents span multiple fields, and his work can be found in prestigious galleries and museums throughout the world. Arik will transform the entrance hall at Stockholm Furniture Fair into a huge, soft platform filled with comfortable cushions and sofa-style seating.

“An exhibition can be extremely taxing physically, mentally and emotionally. I want to create a relaxed and uncomplicated spot in the entrance hall, where people can come and be sociable, relax, connect to the Internet and meet up… It’s all about the people who come here,” he says.

Panels are suspended from the ceiling above the sea of sofas, reflecting what is going on on the platform. A number of his sculptures “Identity Disorder” hang between the reflective ceiling panels – these are transformed items of furniture that no longer serve their original function, such as a chair that has become a chandelier.

“The question then is whether it’s a chair with holes for lights or a chandelier that looks like a chair? This type of question is important to me and my work, and I hope that it can contribute to reflection and discussion of what we are actually doing here. Design can quickly acquire an over-sophisticated image. We forget that the world is actually about people, not tables and chairs,” he says.

Arik Levy was born in 1963 in Israel and now works in Paris. He studied industrial design at Art Center Europe in Switzerland. He has taught at École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle/Les Ateliers in Paris and has held several workshops at a number of design schools in Europe. He has also created set designs for modern dance performances at the Grand Theatre in Geneva, for the Nederlands Dans Theater and the Batsheva Dance Center in Israel. In 1997, he launched the company Ldesign together with Pippo Lionni. Since then they have worked with design companies such as Vitra, Desalto, Molteni, Frag, Ligne Roset, Zanotta, Swedese, and Serralunga. LDesign is now made up of 20 designers and graphic designers and is also involved in branding, packaging, graphic profiling, exhibitions and interior design.

Arik Levy’s work includes sculptures for public environments, but also complete environments that can be adapted for a variety of purposes. "Life is a system of signs and symbols," he says "where nothing is what it seems".  He has featured in exhibitions at venues such as the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Galeries Lafayette, Paris, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the Pascale Cottard-Olsson Gallery, Stockholm, and the ISART Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst, Munich.

Previous guests of honor include Patricia Urquiola, Spain, brothers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, France, Naoto Fukasawa, Japan, Konstantin Grcic, Germany, Giulio Cappellini, Italy, Ineke Hans, Netherlands, and last year, Sir Paul Smith, UK.

The Stockholm Furniture Fair and Northern Light Fair will take place at Stockholmsmässan on February 8-12, 2011.

For further information, visit www.ariklevy.fr or www.stockholmfurniturefair.com and www.northernlightfair.com or contact Lotta Signeul, Media Information Manager, +46 (0)8 749 43 79, lotta.signeul@stockholmsmassan.se.