Lookbook: Defying Gravity Collaborative Installations

Between 2012 and 2015, Wolf-Gor­don sur­prised Neo­Con atten­dees with awe-inspir­ing sculp­tur­al instal­la­tions above the main esca­la­tor — essen­tial­ly hov­er­ing over the main civic space — of the Mer­chan­dise Mart. The pre­cip­i­tous loca­tion of the instal­la­tions was ide­al for infus­ing col­or, pat­tern, and form into our industry’s pre­mier trade con­ven­tion. Wolf-Gordon’s CCO, Mary­beth Shaw, worked with design­ers Hjalti Karls­son and Jan Wilk­er of karlsson­wilk­er, engi­neer and fab­ri­ca­tor Jorge Per­reira of The New Motor, and archi­tect Gra­ham Kel­man to real­ize these chal­leng­ing projects that served to sup­port the Wolf-Gor­don brand while cel­e­brat­ing the ambi­tions of com­mer­cial inte­ri­ors in a com­mu­nal setting.

In 2012, the ​“Crys­talline Drag­on,” a 1,380-pound struc­ture that appeared to radi­ate ener­gy, was com­posed of over 250 faceted pan­els cov­ered in over 500 yards of Wolf-Gordon’s wall­cov­er­ing, uphol­stery tex­tiles, and archi­tec­tur­al paint finishes.

The next year, 2013, saw the instal­la­tion of a decep­tive­ly sim­ple feat of engi­neer­ing: ​“Force of Nature” was designed as a bar­rel roll of repet­i­tive pan­els con­nect­ed by ver­te­brae. A slight taper­ing on one side of each blue con­nect­ing box cre­at­ed a twist­ed spine that gave a sense of move­ment. Near­ly 30′ long and 14′ wide, this instal­la­tion fea­tured 136 Wolf-Gor­don prod­ucts arranged by col­or, form­ing a gra­di­ent that spanned from warm col­ors in one direc­tion to cool­er shades in the oppo­site direction.

Hav­ing fea­tured ani­mal and min­er­al themes in the first two projects, the design team imag­ined leafy strips of botan­i­cal inspi­ra­tion in 2014’s ​“Rib­bon Cloud,” an assem­blage of twelve, 12-foot sculp­tur­al ​“rib­bons” that inter­twined around a grid­ded truss for visu­al com­plex­i­ty. To form iden­ti­cal arc­ing and twist­ing pan­els, Per­reira built a mas­sive cus­tom form­work to which he mold­ed water­logged pan­els, one by one, before dry­ing them and cladding them in Wolf-Gordon’s sur­fac­ing materials.

Fol­low­ing three suc­ces­sive ana­log sculp­tures, the 2015 instal­la­tion went dig­i­tal with ​“SLICE”, a thir­ty-foot-long mono­lith with a screen of over fif­teen thou­sand LEDs. Addi­tion­al design, fab­ri­ca­tion, pro­gram­ming, and instal­la­tion were con­duct­ed by A‑V Con­trols. Once again sus­pend­ed over the main esca­la­tor bank, SLICE cre­at­ed an inno­v­a­tive inter­ac­tion between rid­er and sculp­ture. Hid­den in the LED pan­els were cam­eras that record­ed images of each esca­la­tor rid­er and dis­played their like­ness at the begin­ning of the ​“ride.” As one ascend­ed, one’s like­ness became pro­gres­sive­ly more decon­struct­ed into abstract fields of col­or. As a fol­low-up to the Neo­Con instal­la­tion, karlsson­wilk­er took record­ed footage from SLICE and cre­at­ed a dig­i­tal print wall­cov­er­ing that bears its name, in Wolf-Gordon’s Curat­ed Collection.

The sculp­tur­al instal­la­tions dur­ing 2012 – 2015 also pro­vid­ed cohe­sive com­mu­ni­ca­tions themes for Wolf-Gor­don, a process that is well-doc­u­ment­ed in the company’s 2017 pub­li­ca­tion, Sam­ple Book: 50 Years of Inte­ri­or Fin­ish­es.

“Beyond their visu­al­ly arrest­ing impact for show atten­dees, our sculp­tur­al instal­la­tions at Neo­Con are an essen­tial, uni­fy­ing fea­ture of our com­mu­ni­ca­tions, as we aim to speak to our audi­ence about mean­ing and process. We design our annu­al ad cam­paign around the real stages of con­cep­tu­al­iz­ing and devel­op­ing the sculp­ture, between Jan­u­ary and June; then, we fea­ture pho­tog­ra­phy of the com­plet­ed, installed sculp­ture dur­ing the sec­ond half of the year, focus­ing on spe­cif­ic prod­ucts on the dis­play.”
—Mary­beth Shaw, CCO, Wolf-Gordon

Essen­tial to the ad cam­paigns, as well as to social media and oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions on the sculp­tures, were the exquis­ite still pho­tographs and videos tak­en by pho­tog­ra­ph­er James Shanks. Such sto­ry­telling, which edu­cat­ed design­ers and spec­i­fiers about Wolf-Gordon’s design-cen­tric phi­los­o­phy and con­tin­ues via this ret­ro­spec­tive on our web­site, is not pos­si­ble with­out a robust visu­al archive.