Wolf-Gordon Presents Folio: 50th Anniverary Installation at NeoCon

New York, NY – Folio, Wolf-Gor­don’s 2017 Neo­Con® instal­la­tion, cel­e­brates the com­pa­ny’s 50^th Anniver­sary via a dis­play of its com­mer­cial wall­cov­er­ing and uphol­stery part­ner­ships with lead­ing inter­na­tion­al design­ers, and its recent­ly pub­lished mono­graph, Wolf-Gor­don: Sam­ple Book. Folio will appear on the main floor of The Mart in Chica­go dur­ing Neo­Con, June 11 – 14. This year marks WolfGordon’s sixth con­sec­u­tive spon­sor­ship of main floor space for the instal­la­tion of a pub­lic art/​design project.

The project presents a series of three por­tals, sym­bol­ic of the company’s past, present and future. It derives its name, ​“Folio”, from the vocab­u­lary of print­ed mat­ter, and indeed, books are used in this inno­v­a­tive instal­la­tion as the basic mod­ule of con­struc­tion. They are arrayed in con­sis­tent rows, dis­play­ing each of the book’s 150+ spreads, inter­spersed with quotes from Wolf-Gordon’s founders, employ­ees and dis­tin­guished writ­ers who have con­tributed to Wolf-Gor­don: Sam­ple Book. Pas­sage through Folio takes one through the company’s five decades of design and busi­ness his­to­ry. Above the three por­tals, a strik­ing series of pan­els fan out to imi­tate pages that are turning.

As part of its annu­al spon­sor­ship at Neo­Con, Wolf-Gor­don begins a 6‑month adver­tis­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions cam­paign that cen­ters on the design process of their instal­la­tion. Each stage of the project is revealed in real time, under­scor­ing the cre­ative, engi­neer­ing, and fab­ri­cat­ing tal­ents of the col­lab­o­ra­tive team that col­lab­o­rat­ed on it. Images evolve from sim­ple sketch­es of the nascent project to com­plete 3‑D ren­der­ings, and pho­tog­ra­phy is tak­en once the project is installed at NeoCon.

Part­ners for this col­lab­o­ra­tive project include: Mary­beth Shaw of Wolf-Gor­don (project leader and cre­ative direc­tor), karlsson­wilk­er inc. (envi­ron­men­tal graph­ics), Gra­ham Kel­man (archi­tect and instal­la­tion artist), and Jorge Par­reira of New Motor (engi­neer and fab­ri­ca­tor). As with pre­vi­ous spon­sored instal­la­tions by Wolf­Gor­don, Folio rep­re­sents a best-case sce­nario of col­lab­o­ra­tive process, tal­ent­ed design­ers, and com­plete free­dom of program.

Folio is a bold ges­ture that cap­tures the cre­ativ­i­ty and art-for­ward ethos of Wolf­Gor­don, while being emblem­at­ic of the company’s own jour­ney towards the future. It was pre­viewed at Wanted­De­sign Man­hat­tan from May 20 – 22 dur­ing NYCxDe­sign 2017.