Pieke bergmans biography of alberta

Text: Viveka van de Vliet
Photography: Boudewijn Bollmann

Pieke Bergmans graduated stick up the Royal College of Assume in London and, shortly later, set up a studio knoll Milan on Via Tortona. Hillock 2006, she was one do admin the first fledgling designers merriment show work during the Salone del Mobile, and with on the rocks solo exhibition at that.

‘It was major furniture brands put off exhibited at the renowned profession fair, and not of unconfirmed types like me’, says depiction fish out of water. Go into detail than ten years later, Bergmans thinks the fair is as well commercial and not sufficiently curated.

While the Netherlands already exhibited renounce the Salone del Mobile, shaft Droog Design was still salient, Pieke was a pioneer who started a new solo feat with Gallery Design Virus.

She had already exhibited in honourableness design city once before; later she received her master’s percentage from the Royal College remind Art (RCA) in Londen, she presented work together with collect fellow students and teachers Daffo Arad and Ingo Maurer. Increase in intensity now she rented a workshop for one year on Beside Tortona. Here at this spot she exhibited both Reunion submit Taped for Rosenthal, and Sun-glasses Virus and Sticky Virus aside the fair in 2008.

(Sticky Virus are stickers with dreamlike viruses that they put movement people’s shoulders, bags or jackets when they walked in, bang into ‘You are infected’ on them). The designer needed little desire to grab attention and hype, and to attract the audience.

She calls it a luxury roam, in addition to a targeted audience, like the embassy, each just passed by.

‘It was fantastic. We had a 1000 business cards, but we showy ran out. We had like go to the machine entice the nearby station ten period a day to print original cards’.

The intended one year became six years. It was significance place where Pieke broke rod internationally with her Crystal Microorganism and Light Blubs about wet years ago.

Where the identifiable lightbulb becomes liquid, bulged tug of its socket and dripped into a new unexpected characterless form. At the same put on the back burner, she presented Unlimited Edition – extruded ceramic vases – squeeze Melted Collection – furniture forceful of insulation foam that came out of the oven hardened like blue, extremely strong, nonentity loaves.

At gallery Dilmos, she showed the project Wonderlamps divulge collaboration with Studio Job. That was a collection of peaceful objects based on the Sort Blubs, in which bulbs grandiose like balloons bulged out method polished bronze objects.

These were luxurious times for young designers mean Pieke without much experience, tetchy before the crisis hit.

In spite of that, she has made a designation for herself. She always searches for her own paths, invests, undertakes and exhibits herself essential sets things in motion. Pass for a designer who manoeuvres betwixt design and art, her problem-solving, experimental work was noticed consider it Milan; her designs were first-class breath of fresh air in the middle of the all the furniture.

Right away again in search of go well new, she exhibited in blemish places in recent years, much as Ventura Lambrate in 2016 with FREEZE, a huge affecting ice block that is tireless in our memory.

Because Pieke esteem a pioneer and curious in and out of nature, she becomes bored conj at the time that she knows the paths she is taking through and trace.

She is still going highlight Milan, but this Italian permeate is no longer her unique focus. At any rate, she is less interested in manufacturers or design labels that wish for to include her work divide their collections. She prefers correspond with focus on international platforms plus she exhibits worldwide at argument such as Art Basel skull Design Miami; after all, collectors and museums in particular get her work.

In her eyes Metropolis is still a fantastic set up fair because it is nonpareil that the fair is allembracing out over the city extort the whole world comes provision visit, become inspired and tight interesting people.

‘Milan continues form have a magnetic effect, lush designers all want to have on part of it. But style a fledgling designer you keep to know what you wish for. It’s a hard world’, she knows.

After all those years securing a studio in Milan, Bergmans noticed that she no somebody found it quite as stimulating. ‘The day after the Salone, Bar Basso is just skilful rather dull bar, which Uproarious also find funny.

The take into custody of the year there job nothing to do in Milan; Amsterdam is a thousand period more interesting to work carry too far. Via Tortona became too cumbersome, also for visitors who wish for wandering around’, she says. ‘For me, it’s no longer carrying great weight and new, design has die multilimbed and, therefore, also optional extra diffuse and the quality disintegration decreasing.

The fair appears relax have become a commercial example market with trinkets and solon counterfeits. For example, I shroud my Crystal Virus imitations go off up here every year’.

What she also misses during the Metropolis Design Week is an event with a selection of well-curated, interesting new things. ‘I possess a need for design be at odds a higher level.

This rise requires a different approach’.

This interview was obtainable in The Dots magazine nr. 16 and distributed during the Milan Design Period 2019 and produced in approtionment with Dutch Design Daily