Lake Como Design Festival 2023 to feature CGN's natural history-inspired collection

This year, CGN’s program transitions from summer to fall with the design gallery's first participation at the Lake Como Design Festival (LCDF), an event that will take place from September 16 - 24, 2023, in different locations in the city of Como, Italy. Six pieces developed by CGN (Casa Gutierrez Najera) were selected by curator Giovanna Massoni to be part of the design festival's Contemporary Design Selection, which will be shown at Villa Salazar, a historic building that will open to the public for the first time.

For its fifth edition, LCDF takes up the ideas that Gaius Plinius Secundus—known as Pliny the Elder—put in Naturalis Historia. This encyclopedia from 77 B.C. encompassed all knowledge about nature that existed up to that time and is one of the only individual works of the Roman Empire that survives today. The pieces shown in the Contemporary Design Selection aim to establish an interrelation between objects, materials and technologies that defy climate change as well as the scarcity of natural resources, bringing Pliny the Elder’s work up to date.

In this regard, CGN’s six pieces engage in a direct dialogue with nature through their concepts and their materiality. The 'Watershed' rug designed by Matali Crasset and produced by Odabashian, is inspired by the hydrological basins map of the Mexican Pacific and invites us to bring a piece of territory into a habitable space. The 'Wagyu A4' rug design, conceived by Gabriel Rico and produced by Odabashian also refers to territory but from a human perspective; the piece seeks to represent human presence through Wagyu meat, in which, the proportions of fat and meat can be graphically appreciated.

Natural fibres have been used by humans to craft utilitarian objects for centuries. Through its collaboration with Rattan, a family-owned business with decades of history, CGN.DESIGN seeks to bring contemporary narratives to these materials. In this category is the 'Biombo S' screen designed by Carlos Torre Hütt, whose light and flexible structures generate shadow play throughout the surface, highlighting the wicker weaving. In the same way, the 'Tiki I' chair design by Edgar Orlaineta, woven meticulously by Rattan's artisans, gives life to a face inspired by small children's objects, where playfulness is integrated into the chair’s clear purpose.

Finally, two pieces developed through honest approaches to their materiality complete the selection—the 'Inblock' side table designed by Todomuta Studio and made with solid volumes of American walnut embraced by a steel plate, is the result of an exercise that seeks to provide the material with dynamism through a game of horizontal displacements of the elements that shape the piece. Meanwhile, the 'Still Life' engobed set designed by Edgar Orlaineta allows users to hold and feel elements of the mineral world translated into a present-day aesthetic. This particular collection is the result of a two-year collaboration between the artist and a traditional ceramics workshop.

Founded in 2011 in Queretaro, Mexico, CGN devotes itself to the promotion and production of contemporary design through the development of collectible pieces with meaningful functions. This will be the gallery’s first participation in an international platform outside of Mexico and is the only Mexican participant in LCDF 2023. This effort highlights CGN's vocation as a contemporary design platform based in Mexico with a global projection.