The constraints of the space at the Armory and the building’s historical guidelines were challenging. Callidus Guild succeeded masterfully!
Image courtesy of: Surface Magazine
Culture
The best from 2018’s Salon Art + Design
The Salon Art + Design comes around just once a year. For one beautiful weekend in November, the Park Avenue Armory in NYC is filled with unique exhibitions and installations. Last year’s fair was no different, especially thanks to Callidus Guild’s Yolande Batteau. The exhibition was all about vertical sculptures which played around with obelisks and columns which paid homage to architecture from the past few centuries.
Yolande Batteau, founder of Callidus Guild, setting up her installation at the Armory’s Historic Library Room.
Image courtesy of: TL Magazine
The team’s time was spent between technical planning and explorative art production. Site visits to the Tiffany Room entailed taking measurements and understanding the room’s unique conditions. Rounds and rounds of clay and canvas manipulations were used for testing prior to the start of execution. Eventually, a miniature version of the stelae was created and that’s when the large versions began to appear. Once the versions increased a bit in size and the edits were incorporated, forms were able to be built off-site.
Inspiration for the installation was found by working with a collector in California for whom the team has been building a ceramic wall. In 2017, they dug out clay and pigments in the High Sierras. The beauty and sere size of the mountains is something that doesn’t exist in the east coast. It was experiencing the magnitude of the mountains that really created a desire for to increase the scale Callidus Guild’s works.
Up close and very personal…
Image courtesy of: Pictame
Batteau describes the process of creating this enormous piece, “the challenges of implementing some of my artwork into a larger scale which included figuring out what materials could replace a plaster of Paris cast into in a monumental wall.”
Nevertheless, these difficulties led Batteau to discover new materials she hadn’t used before. As a result, amazing and unexpected results ensued!
John Pomp tables, Peter Lane ceramics, and an Alex Hangentorn sculpture are among the curated items.
Image courtesy of: TL Magazine
The pieces placed alongside the installation in the Library Room were specifically curated by Jeff Lincoln. There was careful thought to showcase the juxtaposition between the rough walls and the delicate selections.
This light-filled triplex space is now completely occupied by Callidus Guild. We absolutely love this Brooklyn space, and all that goes on inside it’s walls!
Image courtesy of: Architectural Digest
Perhaps the story ends with the basic fact that the luxury art and design market is filled with polished pieces. Today, there is a great collection of artists who are happy to “step outside their box” and to create something which is unexpected. There’s nothing wrong with jagged or clunky or immense… but we kind of like this new different too.
