DesignMiami/ will come to Hong Kong in 2015, though in what shape and form remains to be decided, Rodman Primack says.
Speaking to BlouinArtinfo on the side of Art Basel in Hong Kong, the newly appointed director of DesignMiami said “we will do something for sure next year here. Whether it’s a fair or some other iteration” adding, “ We could do an exhibition or a series of talks, a number of things around design. It remains to be seen.”
Asked about the upcoming fair in Basel next month, Primack said he’d noticed a return to very natural materials like marble, leather, and bronze. “Very traditional materials are coming back, not necessarily in very traditional ways, but a very visible materiality. It’s interesting to see designers are making things either exclusively out of those materials, or combining things with carbon fibers and other newer materials,” he said.
And with the Miami edition celebrating its 10-year-anniversary in December, Primack said it was the opportunity to look at the fair for the next 10 years. “For me the fair doesn’t need to grow, really. The metric for success would not be the number of booths, that’s not what I’m looking for. I’m wanting to tell a more complete story of 20th-century design while maintaining our vision on what is best in the 21st century, and maybe getting some opportunity of looking at older things, like 19th-century furniture and how it fits into 20th-century design.”
Primark said he had no intention of pushing the fair away from French furniture design, which has been its main staple, but acknowledges there’s room for a little more range. “I would like to see more voices, whether they are contemporary or vintage, I would love to see more French Art Deco, I’d like to see us expand more into Scandinavia, not just the most typical ones,” he said.
While the fair is already actively planning celebrations for Miami, he said, no details would be revealed until after the Basel edition.