Incollect Magazine - Issue 14

4 www.incollect.com HAPPENINGS Upper left: Lounge Chair Neko, 2025, Brushed aluminum, raku beads, French leather. Upper right: Stool Neko, 2025, Brushed aluminum, leather, bud vase in raku. Left: Coffee Table Neko, 2025, Brushed aluminum, anodized aluminum, raku ceramic. Valerie Goodman Gallery in New York is presenting a new furniture collection by Benoît Maire, a French artist well known for his Oriental landscape paintings featured in collections from the Centre Pompidou to the Villa Medici, as well as design installations for Hermès. This is Marie’s first solo show of furniture in the U.S. and presents five unique, hand-fabricated pieces of furniture along with several sculptural works. “Maire’s work exists at the intersection of art and living. It asks us to think about how objects shape our bodies, our spaces, and our ideas,” says gallery owner Valerie Goodman. The collection, titled Neko, the Japanese word for cat, was inspired by the movements of a cat in the Kyoto studio of the ceramic artist Kanjiro Kawai. “Maire observed the way a cat moved freely and intuitively through the workshop: climbing, resting, stretching, and inhabiting the space with quiet intelligence,” Goodman explains. “This moment became the catalyst for the whole collection.” The furniture on view includes a lounge chair, a coffee table, a side table, a stool, and chimes. Each of the pieces is mostly made from a single sheet of aluminum, reflecting the artist’s commitment to an economy of means, prosaic materials, and ecological awareness. Offcuts are repurposed into complementary elements, such as chimes and decorative sculptural accents, to minimize waste. Ceramic components, leather cushions, and little tassel details, all made by the artist, soften the industrial surfaces while also reinforcing the handmade quality of the work. Some pieces even incorporate sound elements, enhancing the artist’s vision of furniture as something to be actively engaged with rather than just passively used. “I wanted to design furniture that doesn’t aim to please through plush comfort,” Maire says, “but through an active, invigorating comfort, something that invites movement, attention, and presence.” Benoît Maire’s Designs Debut at Valerie Goodman Gallery VALERIE GOODMAN GALLERY 315 East 91st Street, 1st floor, New York, NY 10128 212.348.2968 |  vg@valeriegoodmangallery.com |  valeriegoodmangallery.com Photography by Benoît Maire