Define Seoul 2023
Memphis, Gufram, Marcello Morandini and Greem
1 Nov – 5 Nov 2023
2F, Andy’s 636
36, Seongsuil-ro 6-gil, Seongdong-gu,
Seoul, South Korea

Define Seoul 2023
Memphis, Gufram, Marcello Morandini and Greem
Memphis
The Memphis Group was an Italian design movement founded by Ettore Sottsass in 1981 alongside Michele de Lucchi, Aldo Cibic, Matteo Thun, Marco Zanini, Martine Bedin, Nathalie Du Pasquier, and George Sowden. Active between 1981 and 1988, the Memphis Group defined ‘80s aesthetic and greatly revolutionised the design world.
Memphis sought to rebel against the ‘uniform panorama of good taste’ of the time, where the principle ‘form follows function’ reigned supreme. With Memphis, design has been liberated from rationality, and enters the realm of poetry. Form no longer had to follow function. Design could be loud, colourful, whimsical, with clashing patterns. Objects were liberated from function and instead became a visual object rather than just a tool or piece of furniture.
The pieces shown by the Memphis Group and their international collaborators were shocking: mixing elegance and kitsch, playing with absurd and irrational shapes, using plastic laminates with patterns that simulate precious materials, but most of all it introduced the pleasure of play into the rational language of industrial production. Love it or hate it, it rapidly amassed public and press attention worldwide, and came to define the aesthetics of the ‘80s. More importantly, it expanded the boundaries of design, emphasising the expressive possibilities of design as a vehicle of communication, rather than just one of utilitarian function.
Gufram
Gufram is an Interior Design Italia brand globally known for pushing the limits of industrial design. With its Radical Design spirit and its nonconformist experimentation linked to aesthetic, technological, and material research, Gufram has created seats and interior design icons that have entered collective imagination: playful, subversive, and desecrating products with a POP soul, willingly designed as anti-design items.
Gufram was born in Turin as an artisanal entity, where the craftsmen who were specialized in upholstery, cabinet making, and furniture padding met the artistic and international avant-garde with the goal of giving birth to a new way of understanding modern furniture. Since 1966 Gufram has been producing design icons that have become unique in form and value thanks to the cross-pollination between the industrial design approach, the artisanal creation and the imaginative flair typical of Art. Gufram’s unmistakable furniture items like the lips shaped couch Bocca, the chaise lounge Pratone and the hall tree Cactus, are also known as Domestic Sculptures, the contact point between the art and design worlds. They are now displayed in the most beautiful houses and in the most renowned museums in the world including MoMA (New York), The Met (New York), and Centre Pompidou (Paris).
Today Gufram has once again become an important and influential nonconformist voice; with its unconventional approach it gives birth to new style icons also outside the world of Interior Design, thus contaminating all design fields from fashion to automotive to everything related to contemporary aesthetics.
Marcello Morandini
Marcello Morandini’s (b. Mantua, 1940) artistic production began in the early 1960s in a climate of great experimentation and of rupture with tradition and Art Informel. Always maintaining a strong aesthetic and conceptual consistency, Morandini studies and designs geometrical forms. He disassembles and rebuilds them. He moves them within a space delimited by a square. He gives them volume, transforming them in tridimensional sculptures or actual architectures, such as skyscrapers built in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. From his first works, the artist chooses to only use black and white in juxtaposition with each other, and gray in some cases to create depth. Black on white, as in writing and in graphics, makes visual communication more immediate. In the words of the artist, “with black on white you can say everything: music is written black on white, literature too. World knowledge is in black and white.” In fact, Morandini sticks to the essential, to minimal language, he reduces everything to very few elements that work as starting points for infinite plastic and formal evolutions and involutions. His compositions are in a constant variation of the geometries, conceivable in tiny or gigantic dimensions, in a series or as unique pieces, manually or industrially built.
Greem
Greem (b. South Korea, 1993) studied Object & Spatial Design at ESAD de Reims in France. After graduating in 2017, She now works as an artist, and designer based in Seoul, Korea. She focuses on creating interactive objects and spaces to please people and to stimulate their curiosity. Jeong Greem transforms silicon tubes, the construction material, into a single drawing-like furniture. The‘Mono’ series, which is composed of rhythmic lines and inspires imaginations, is the product of curiosity about mundane, everyday material. Let’s imagine drawing three-dimensionally on a space when you imagine it as a drawing paper.
SELECTED WORKS
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Mono Series
Greem Jeong
Mono Series, 2020
Silicon, steel, acrylic table.
Size: W 50, D 50, H 44 cm -
Mono Series 03 – Hawaiian Ocean
Greem Jeong
Mono Series 03 – Hawaiian Ocean, 2023
Plastic vase.
Size: W 18, D 18, H 30 cm
Edition of 30 -
Mono Series 03
Greem Jeong
Mono Series 03, 2023
Plastic vase.
Size: W 25, D 25, H 31 cm
Edition of 30 -
Mono Series 04
Greem Jeong
Mono Series 04, 2023
Plastic lamp. (Also available in red, blue and black)
Size: W 20, D 22, H 35 cm
Edition of 30 -
Knot Chair – Golden Oak
Greem Jeong
Knot Chair – Golden Oak, 2022
Silicone and steel chair.
Size: W 52, D 50, H 93 cm -
Knot chair-Blue Grotto
Greem Jeong
Knot Chair – Blue Grotto, 2023
Silicone and steel chair.
Size: W 52, D 50, H 93 cm -
Mono Series-To read in the morning and at night
Greem Jeong
Mono Series – To read in the morning and at night, 2023
Silicone and steel floor lamp.
Size: W 85, D 170, H 187 cm -
Mono Series
Greem Jeong
Mono Series, 2023
Silicone, steel, acrylic table.
Size: W 130, D 75, H 44.5 cm -
Polar
Michele De Lucchi
Polar, 1984
Collection: Memphis Milano
Low coffee table made of lacquered wood and covered with decorative laminate
W 70, D 35, H 40 cm -
Broken Bench Blue Edition
Snarkitecture
Broken Bench Blue Edition, 2023
Bench of soft polyurethane, finished and decorated by hand with Guflac®.
Size: W 190, D 70, H 43 cm
Limited edition of 33. -
Sunrise Cactus
Gufram x Paul Smith (original design by Drocco / Mello)
Sunrise Cactus, 2023
W 70, D 70, H 170 cm
Coat stand of soft polyurethane finished by hand with Guflac®.
Limited edition of 169. -
The Sculpted Series Bookcase Black
Snarkitecture
The Sculpted Series Bookcase Black, 2023
Bookcase of soft polyurethane, finished and decorated by hand with Guflac®
Size: W 100, D 56, H 190 cm
Limited edition of 9. -
The Sculpted Series Armchair Black
Snarkitecture
The Sculpted Series Armchair Black, 2023
Armchair of soft polyurethane, finished and decorated by hand with Guflac®
Size: W 100, D 86, H 110 cm
Limited edition of 9. -
MAgriTTA
Sebastiàn Matta
MAgriTTA, 1970
Seat of soft polyurethane upholstered with bouclé wool.
Size: W 84, D 92, H 64 cm -
Madonna
Arquitectonica
Madonna, 1984
Collection: Memphis Milano
Lacquered wooden table
W 244, D 144, H 74 cm -
The End White
Toiletpaper
The End White, 2016
Seat of soft polyurethane, finished and decorated with Guflac®
Size: W 36, D 22, H 60 cm
Limited edition of 500 -
Massolo
Piero Gilardi
Massolo, 1974
Tea table of soft polyurethane, finished and decorated by hand with Guflac®
Size: W 97, D 66, H 36 cm
Limited edition of 500 -
Another Green Cactus
Drocco / Mello
Another Green Cactus
2018
L70 x W70 x H170 cm
Coat stand of soft polyurethane finished by hand with Guflac®. -
Bocca
Studio 65
Red Lip
1970
L212 x W80 x H85 cm
Couch in soft polyurethane upholstered with fabric. -
Lampada Bianera
Marcello Morandini
Lampada Bianera, 2008
Table lamp
W 47, D 41, H 50 cm
Limited edition No.9 of 999 -
First, Michele de Lucchi
Michele De Lucchi
First, 1983
Collection: Memphis Milano
Chair in lacquered wood, coated metal frame
W 59, D 50, H 90 cm -
Peter Shire image3
Peter Shire
Hollywood, 1983
Collection: Memphis Milano
Table in metal and plastic laminate
W 75, D 75, H 58 cm -
Peter Shire image1
Peter Shire
Big Sur, 1986
Collection: Memphis Milano
Couch in wool 100%. Structure in lacquered wood
W 210, D 72, H 96 cm -
Nathalie Du Pasquier image10
Nathalie Du Pasquier
Quarzo, 2018
Collection: Materialism, Post Design
Cupboard with draw in painted wood, structure and top in plastic laminate, doors with printed decoration.
Size: W 80, D 40, H 120 cm
Limited series of 25 pieces -
Michele De Lucchi image4
Michele De Lucchi
Oceanic, 1981
Collection: Memphis Milano
Table lamp in metal. Bulb E27, 60W.
H 75 cm -
Martine Bedin image4
Martine Bedin
Super, 1981
Collection: Memphis Milano
Table or floor lamp in fiberglass. Bulb E14, 40W.
W 45 x H 30 cm -
Valentina
Marcello Morandini
Valentina, 2015
Furniture in lacquered wood
W 50.5, H 108, D 71 cm
Limited edition of 50 -
Sedia Bine
Marcello Morandini
Sedia Bine, 1991
Bench in lacquered wood
W 100, H 90, D 55 cm
Limited edition of 5 -
Posseduta
Marcello Morandini
Posseduta, 2008
Bench in lacquered wood
W 60, H 100, D 150 cm
Limited edition of 12 -
Ettore Sottsass image27
Ettore Sottsass
Tigris, 1983
Collection: Memphis Milano
Porcelain vase
Base Ø 19, H 39 cm -
Ettore Sottsass image25
Ettore Sottsass
Tahiti, 1981
Collection: Memphis Milano
Table lamp with rotating head in polychrome enamelled metal mounted on a plastic laminate base with black and white Bacterio pattern.
H 70 cm, bulb EU version 220V -
Ettore Sottsass image23
Ettore Sottsass
Sol, 1982
Collection: Memphis Milano
Fruit bowl in blown glass
D 29 x H 24 cm -
Ettore Sottsass image22
Ettore Sottsass
Sirio, 1982
Collection: Memphis Milano
Flower vase in blown glass
Size: H 35 cm -
Ettore Sottsass image14
Ettore Sottsass
Hyatt, 1984
Collection: Memphis Milano
End table in briar and metal
42 x 43 cm -
Ettore Sottsass image12
Ettore Sottsass
Euphrates, 1983
Collection: Memphis Milano
Porcelain vase.
Ø 22, H 40 cm -
Milan image7
Ettore Sottsass
Nilo, 1983
Collection: Memphis Milano
Porcelain vase
base Ø 14, H 31 cm -
Art Central 2021 image9
Shiro Kuramata
Sally, 1987
Collection: Memphis Milano
End table in metal and glass.
Ø 53, H 75 cm