Metropolitan Improvement 2015 / 2016

Time goes by so fast, we’re almost dizzy. It’s 2015 now and little DANTE is now a chubby, healthy three-year old, who still keeps us on our toes most days and some nights. It’s also our 4th collection coming up and we’re getting a little contemplative. So this year, we took a step back and instead of innovation we thought about: improvement. Making stuff better. Using stuff that is already around to making something new. Making something old new by making it better. And so on.

We’re calling this collection „Metropolitan Improvement” because we kind of like the sound of that. And because „Metropolis” aka „The City” represents a place of constant re-invention. A place where, as the brilliant Rem Kolhaas put it, culture is made.

For „Metropolitan Improvement” we took generic industrial shapes like the T-beam and improved it into a stool. We coaxed the machine that churns out aluminum shutter slats to help us make a beautiful folding-screen. Which is, come to think of it, a very metropolitan production itself, as it provides privacy in public space.

Consequently, our 2015 Guest is not a specific person, but an unspecific type: The Citizen. Himself. The most individual individual and, at the same time, the most generic, too.

Guest

DANTE – Goods and Bads’ inspirational guest for the Scenes From the Prairie  collection is French illustrator Gustave Doré. With his mysterious and fairytale-like landscapes, Doré created the exact mood DANTE – Goods and Bads is trying to convey with this collection. By adding strangely artificial or entirely impossible elements such as lens flare or soft focus to his lush copperplate prints, Aylin Langreuter transforms them into something entirely new. These artworks are also part of the collection and, like Scenes From the Prairie itself, are meant to be a tribute to Doré’s forever fascinating work.

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