ART
A Seat At PAD London
BY VANESA KRIZONYTE
Dining requires a table and a chair. A year ago, over a Lebanese dinner, Glen Hardwick-Bruce posed a question: do we socially need another chair design? A simple concept, yet one that still lingers. Walking through the 18th edition of PAD London, a panorama of conceptually rigorous and audacious designs, the question resurfaced.
Early seating in the Neolithic period consisted of benches and raised surfaces. By 2900 BC, chairs in Ancient Egypt featured backrests and became symbols of social hierarchy. Without hesitation, a new design is not necessary, and there is a seat for everyone, but unusual chairs challenge our expectations, offering a different kind of sensory stimulation…
The Campana brothers, Fernando and Humberto, are known for moving away from seeing furniture purely as functional, transforming everyday objects into expressions of personality, culture, and creative identity. Panda Banquette 2005 is assembled from toys stitched together to create a soft seating surface, cushioned in a cloud of playful memory and youthful nostalgia. The piece recalls the Campana Brothers’ 2018 collaboration with American artist KAWS, which transformed plush characters into collectible objects.
In timeless character, Rinck unveiled the Opus Memoria collection to visitors in London. Under Valentin Goux’s artistic direction, the Throne Armchair unites a sandblasted solid frame with leather drapery spilling like a royal train. The dancing leather against the oiled chestnut wood echoes female presence and plays with absence. From the frontal perspective, the chair appears smooth and inviting. Viewed from behind, the leather begins to dance, almost telling the story of a woman who has just risen from her seat. Rinck creates a distinctive vision of chairs as capable of carrying character and gendered forms.
This year, Galerie Kreo showcased renowned French designer Jean-Baptiste Fastrez. The Leopard Stool was significant for its distinctive surface treatment. Fastrez frequently draws inspiration from the natural world, animal forms, textures, and patterns. Using nature as ornament, the stool’s hammered and sanded golden brass evokes leopard skin without reproducing fur. Its surface recalls the animal-print language of Chanel’s Métiers d’art bag, where the natural world becomes an expression of luxury. Fastrez’s manipulation of texture brings animal prints into furniture design, transforming the stool into an expression of fashion.
Yang Seung Jin shifts balloons into sculptural functional furniture using layers of epoxy resin. The playful structures challenge permanence versus impermanence – frozen in the moment of inflation and inviting a seat. Yang Seung Jin takes a fragile balloon form and gives it a lasting functional design.
Swedish artist Alfhild Sarah Külper, represented by Rademakers Gallery, created a colourful textile landscape. The Gentle Bloom Bench invited visitors not only to admire the work but to experience it physically.
In conversation, Alfhild explained how her creations begin with “soft spots”, personal memories and stories that bring feelings of warmth and safety. She collects these moments through her own experiences and conversations with others, imagining them as blurry colours and organic shapes, much like the fragments of a dream recalled upon waking. Having spent ten years at Viktor & Rolf, her relationship with textiles has always felt natural. As she explains, “Textiles really came out of more of a need for me; it was really looking at my own environment and getting the feeling that I needed more softness, I needed something that felt more like my inner world.”
Rather than creating art that remains untouched behind glass, Alfhild wants her pieces to offer something to those who encounter them, whether that means simply looking at them, sitting on them, or even hugging them. Her work becomes an invitation to connect with a chair rather than simply observe.
The exploration of chair designs continued into Milan, where a silver Monster Chair by Marcel Wanders caught attention in Moooi’s window display. A striking steel frame wrapped in quilted metallic silver was presented as part of Moooi’s 25th-anniversary celebrations at Milan Design Week 2026, offering another interpretation of the chair as an expressive and theatrical object.
After a month of international discoveries, conversations about design and events, moments of pause were with feet up on a stool (Jean-Baptiste Fastrez’s leopard stool soon to come!) and covered in a glossy face mask. On the Sunday closing of Frieze Week, moments before departing the fair, Self-Portrait by Issy Wood caught us in captivation with its raw reality. Through cropped facial composition and an unsettled perspective, the female figure glistening in a Korean sheet mask becomes a psychological exploration of intimacy, desire, consumer culture, and the complexities of contemporary identity.
Following a trip to Seoul in 2023, Wood returned with a collection of sheet masks, which became the starting point for a series of portraits, including works shown at the National Portrait Gallery. The Self-Portrait is said to be “the painting every girl at Frieze put on their story,” and Artnet explored “how Issy Wood inspired a new painting style.” To us, Wood represents an expression of 21st-century girlhood.
This is not to say the exploration of chairs wasn’t fruitful, simply Wood stands as a painter who understands the nature of the 21st-century woman, regardless of the chair she chooses to sit on.
Across the PAD London fair, familiar materials took on unfamiliar forms. What began as a question over dinner became an exploration of how we occupy spaces, physically and emotionally. Perhaps we don’t necessarily need another chair, but there is always room for new ways of treating a seat.
Gratitude to Alix Roché for PAD London 2026 Press Accreditation. Thank you to representatives of ZIGZAG Modern, Rinck Collection, Galerie Kreo, Gallery LVS & Craft, Rademakers Gallery, MOOOI for the warm hosting and press materials. Thank you to the Photographers mentioned. Deepest gratitude to the partners and PAD committee for PAD London Design 18th edition.
Gratitude to Carlos Ishikawa at Frieze 2026 for sharing artist Issy Wood. Thank you to Press Officers at National Portrait Gallery for sharing the Issy Wood Self-Portraits Press Pack.
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