Romance & Gravity

2020

In 2018 during their residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, the contextual design duo of Marija Puipaitė and Vytautas Gečas began artistic research into the decor. Taking as their point of reference the idea that the Baroque epoch at its outset was associated with something ‘peculiar and unnecessarily complicated’, they linked it to the depreciation of decor in our everyday environment. While analyzing historical artifacts and techniques, they focused on the actualization of decor and its possible manifestations in the context of contemporary design.

All of this, together with practical experimentation and a playful approach to contemporary materials techniques, became embodied in Romance & Gravity, an eclectic collection of furniture and interior accessories.

Seeking to reintroduce decor in the present-day context, Marija Puipaitė and Vytautas Gečas employed such decorative elements as frames and folds and transformed them into autonomous, almost conscious functional works. The mirror frame, which itself became a mirror, and the dresser, inspired by racing technology, display motifs of deformation and fluidity, as if their form was shaped by time and speed

Pictures by Darius Petrulaitis