“The Ideology of Beauty” by Karim Rashid

The wish of famous Egyptian industrial designer, Karim Rashid, came true when his exhibition, “The Ideology of Beauty”, was put on display at Zagreb’s Museum of Contemporary Art. The museum building itself had left a great impression on him, and we are sure his works will leave a great impression on the audience.

Around fifty works, pieces of furniture by one of the most prolific contemporary industrial designers, Egyptian Karim Rashid, will be on show at Zagreb’s Museum of Contemporary Art until the end of the year. The exhibition, “Ideology of Beauty”, was organized in cooperation with Die Neue Sammlung - The International Design Museum of Munich, according to the wishes of the designer himself, who was very impressed with the museum building on his previous visit to Zagreb.

His wish was granted, and we believe the same will be true of the exhibition visitors who will have an opportunity to see very provocative pieces of furniture and other works that belong to the domain of industrial design. Provocative design is Karim Rashid’s signature, as well as the bright pink colour most of his work is painted with. Karim Rashid is regarded as one of the most productive contemporary industrial designers, so his attractive pieces are often very highly priced. All of those who cannot afford such works of art will at least have an opportunity to enjoy them in this exhibition, which features some of the designer’s most famous works such as the Love Chair, DNA, Lava, Blow Job, Pleasurescape, Volcano Bench, etc...

Interestingly, apart from being appealing, the mostly pink, quite atypical and often provocative pieces of furniture and household items featured in this exhibition are already part of the existing Collection in Motion of the Museum of Contemporary Art. In such a revolutionary way, author Karim Rashid and the museum curators (including Rashid’s permanent curator) have created a synergy of art and design in order to examine both streams of contemporary art in the same space.

The exhibition also has a third dimension, as four locations within the exhibition itself feature multimedia installations in which Rashid talks about himself, his design philosophy, art and design, and his reasons for putting on an exhibition in Zagreb, while the museum’s media façade will feature a digital patchwork consisting of a selection of the author’s opus.

If all of that is not intriguing enough, keep in mind that the exhibition also features a prize giveaway at the end of the exhibition, the prize being one of Rashid’s latest designs – a Vertex chair.