I've always been obsessed with balls. The only thing I’ve ever stolen in my life was a huge ball bearing from a neighborhood friend when I was four or five years old. It was so perfect, shiny, and incredibly heavy. I still feel badly about that. So, flash forward 25 years, when I’m cruising through a cramped and overloaded junk shop on the Upper East Side. I find myself surrounded by shelves filled with Lucite cubes, with all manner of balls and squares encased inside of them! I was stunned. What were they?
I picked one up and walked over to the owner to ask how much they were. He said they were seventy-five bucks each. What??? Damn, I thought they were gonna be five bucks each, and I was going to buy all fifty of them. Well, it wasn't meant to be, but I kept going back and coveting them until I finally bought some of the chipped and badly scratched ones for twenty dollars each. I should also mention that I ended up buying a bunch of deadstock Noguchi lamps at this shop, and I bet they came from the same source. I ended up giving away those first cubes to a girlfriend at the time, who had started a Lucite paperweight collection. I probably didn’t keep any of them because I wanted one of the perfect ones, or maybe she was just persuasive...I don't really remember now, but I know I still regret that decision.
It wasn't until ten or so years ago that I saw the same Lucite-encased balls sitting on a shelf in one of the Architecture and Design galleries at MoMA. I was blown away to find out that they were not simply paperweights, but pieces of modernist art by the Italian genius Enzo Mari. I immediately wondered how I could find more. The ones in the little junk shop were long gone (as was the girlfriend), so I started looking at flea markets, antique malls, and later on eBay, all to no avail. Nobody knew what they were. They weren't signed—or so I thought; they are, but the mark is almost impossible to see and can wear off—so finding them required searching through mounds of tchotchkes. I didn't make much progress. Finally, about five years ago, luck struck online, and I finally had in my hot little hands an “Eames Era Lucite Paperweight” for thirty dollars plus shipping. I was thrilled, and the hunt continues to this day.
If asked to select one word to describe Patrick, I would resist and pick two. The first would be curiosity — a fundamental essential, to stimulate inquiry and rigour in all things, both great and small, of any era or region, type or surface. Even the most fleeting survey of this selection for sale is a celebration of innovation and of inspiration — an unerring eye for the unusually exceptional, or perhaps the exceptionally unusual. The chances are, that these are indeed discoveries that you have not yet realised that you needed to make.
Mentor, would be my second word. If artefacts and objects articulate visual, cultural and historic language, then the fluency of skillful mentorship — to guide, nurture, describe and explain — releases the eloquence of murmuring histories. In this capacity Patrick is that most earnest and sincere of excellent narrators. If ever I had friends, clients or colleagues visiting New York looking for unusual inspiration, there was always the certainty that Patrick’s venues would offer them a glimpse of the hitherto unseen or the unusually seductive, always with the reassurance of the most fascinating story waiting to be told.
Mentorship and curiosity, when balanced in equal measure, reveal the precious alchemy of a curator. And it is the duty of the mature curator to discern and detect, to cultivate change, and from there to pioneer, and to share. Innovation is never static, and the Present is already the Future. Fresh dialogs evolve, energies to be nurtured, opportunities to be guided. Renewed and re-orientated, Patrick’s decision to exchange his bricks-and-mortar Tribeca gallery for a new interactive Brooklyn space aligns him towards a new inquisitive future as supportive benefactor, interlocutor and mentor to a fresh yield of talented creators — those established and those rising — and the quest for discovery rejuvenates.
— Simon Andrews
andrewsartadvisory.com
When the quality of form emerges, it goes straight to your heart. It has no need for justification.
Enzo Mari
Enzo Mari 1932–2020
Irascible, polemical, and influential are just a few of the words most commonly associated with Italian artist, designer, critic, and theorist Enzo Mari, who is perhaps most famous for his favorite (and oft-repeated) quote: “Design is dead”. Born and raised in Cerano, a region of Piedmont, Mari moved to Milan in 1947 and worked a variety of jobs before enrolling in the prestigious Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in 1952. He studied art and literature with a specific focus on the psychology of vision, the planning of perceptive structures, and the methodology of design. Not long after graduating he met Bruno Danese, co-founder of the eponymous design brand Danese; it was an encounter that would shape the remainder of Mari’s career.
Danese and Mari both felt strongly that good design should be accessible, economic, and affordable. Mari designed a multitude of creations for the company, including the much admired 16 Animali wooden puzzle. Inspired by his own children as well as his research into Scandinavian toys, it was a toy made from a single piece of oak that, with one continuous cut, came apart into 16 separate animals. Mari went on to conceive of over 1500 designs for many premier Italian design companies including Driade, Artemide, Zanotta and Magis. He also created illustrations, books with Einaudi and Bollati Boringhieri, and works for children. One of his most memorable projects, and the one which best demonstrates his belief that design should be accessible to all, was his Proposta per un’Autoprogettazione (Proposal for a Self-design) series. It consisted of a set of diagrams that allowed anyone to build DIY furniture with cuts of pine and some nails, the instructions for which Mari would mail to anyone who sent him postage.
Auction Results Enzo Mari
