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See This
Household Objects of the ’90s, Recreated in Clay
In “Domestic Bliss,” a tenderly realized portrait of American life in the 1990s at Alexander Berggruen gallery in New York, the artist Stephanie Shih draws us into a fraught family narrative. The ceramic objects on view play various roles in the interior drama: Cigarette butts and a crushed beer can signal temptations acquiesced to; the complete “Buns of Steel” workout series on VHS and Suzanne Somers’s ThighMaster offer proof of an investment in personal improvement. Viagra tablets point to lust, perhaps hope. Frozen dinners — one for each member of the titular “Nuclear Family” — sit atop a white Panasonic microwave oven, suggesting an uneasy coexistence. On an ironing board, an iron keeps company with the paperback bodice-ripper “Prisoner of My Desire.” The book that inspired this body of work? 1998’s “Divorce for Dummies,” which Shih has rendered here as part of a self-help library. The artist builds the pieces by hand, using a fine brush to decorate their surfaces. There are subtle signs that each object is handmade, evoking the crafted pop sensibility of Corita Kent or Liza Lou — a slightly dappled finish here, a hint of hand lettering there. The net result is the uncanny feeling that the whole room has been seen, recorded, lost, then lovingly recreated, each element conjured by a human being with a memory that aches. “Stephanie H. Shih: Domestic Bliss” is on view at Alexander Berggruen, New York, from Jan. 22 through Feb. 26, alexanderberggruen.com.
Stay Here
A New Madrid Hotel Pays Homage to the City’s Creative History
When the French designer Philippe Starck was asked to design the Brach Madrid, a hotel that opened earlier this month in a 1920s building on the Spanish capital’s central Calle Gran Via, he wanted to channel the city’s creative spirit. On the ground floor, the hotel’s cafe features woven-leather ceilings and walls lined with artisanal tiles, along with dozens of paintings by Spanish artists that Starck spent three years searching out. The 57 rooms are decorated with flamenco shawls, vintage black-and-white portraits, leather headboards and tasseled pillows. Each bathroom has an oversized terra cotta-framed mirror and flecked breccia-tiled floors. The Brach restaurant, which serves a Mediterranean-inflected menu with dishes like grilled eggplant with tahini and lamb shoulder with za’atar sauce, is meant to feel like a grand European cafe. Starck put in wood-paneled walls, large tilted mirrors and several portraits of the Spanish poet Gabriel Garcia Lorca, a reference to Madrid’s Surrealist avant-garde era when Lorca, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí would gather at the city’s Café Gijón. From about $500 a night, brachmadrid.com.
When Elena Liao and Frederico Ribeiro started Té Company, a Taiwanese teahouse in New York’s West Village, in 2012, Liao knew she wanted to serve pineapple cake. But, unwilling to compete with her own (and everyone else’s) memories of the iconic Taiwanese treat, “we thought we’d do something pineapple cake adjacent,” she says. They created a linzer cookie composed of pineapple jam and yuzu kosho between hazelnut shortbread cookies. Since then, a number of bakers across the country have introduced new versions of the classic sweet, which typically takes the form of a buttery shortcrust shaped like an ingot and filled with pineapple, which is sometimes mixed with winter melon. For her pop-ups in the Bay Area, Calif., the pastry chef Jessica Little Fu made the treat using a peach, nectarine and pineapple conserve, topping the bars with crème fraîche and lime leaf powder. During the Chinese New Year season, Win Son Bakery in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, collaborates with the nearby Taiwanese shop Yun Hai to offer a Parmesan shortbread filled with pineapple jam. And for a recent special, the ice cream shop Caffè Panna, with locations in Gramercy Park and Greenpoint, sold a sundae of Win Son’s crumbled cookies layered with fior di panna soft serve and finished with grana Padano cheese and pineapple jam. At the Foundry Bakery in suburban St. Louis, owner Raymond Yeh says making pineapple cake for his Taiwanese-inspired bakery “is a no-brainer because it’s really the pastry of Taiwan.” Pineapple cake is considered particularly auspicious around the Lunar New Year — in Taiwanese, the word “pineapple” is a homonym for “prosperity coming.” This year, Yeh is making a kumquat pineapple cake, doubling down by adding another fortuitous fruit.
Visit This
An Artist’s Experiments With Color and Light, on View in Mexico City
Lately, the Mexican artist Christian Camacho has found inspiration in the shadows of the colored vinyl tarps that are commonplace across the country. They hang over market stalls and public plazas, bathing anyone who walks under them in varying intense hues. His nearly 50-foot-wide work “Aquaplén o plano central flotante” (2022) evokes that kaleidoscopic experience with a patchwork of vulcanized canvas that’s reminiscent of stained glass. Originally commissioned for the Macroplaza, a town square in Monterrey, Mexico, it was later installed at the bottom of an Olympic-size swimming pool in the same city. Now, it’s one of four pieces that make up “Inmersión: Formas del campo líquido,” an exhibition at the Museo Universitario del Chopo in Mexico City. Incorporating various mediums including water, acetate and an LED monitor, Camacho’s work challenges the viewer’s perception of scale and light. “Inmersión: Formas del campo líquido” will be on view at the Museo Universitario Del Chopo, Mexico City, from Feb. 1 through May 18, chopo.unam.mx.
Covet This
Ceramic or Cardboard? Vessels That Demand a Double Take
With their slightly grainy texture and mottled brown hue, the ceramist Jacques Monneraud’s stoneware pieces so closely resemble cardboard that when buyers unbox their purchases, they’re sometimes unsure where the packaging ends and the vessel begins. Online, the Bayonne, France-based ceramist says, “people would scroll past photos of my work and think it was AI; then they’d realize it actually exists and be really surprised.” Monneraud, who has a background in graphic design and grew up around painting and woodworking, often makes prototypes in actual cardboard. Then he’ll mimic the subtle rippling of the material in clay, add corrugated zigzags along the edges and paint on milky stripes of translucent glaze that look just like cellophane tape. “We think of cardboard as disposable,” he says, “so I really enjoy the contrast of turning it into pottery, which can survive for thousands of years.” For his latest pieces, Monneraud referenced classical Chinese, Iranian and Guatemalan forms and rebuilt them in his modern vernacular. They’re on display this week at the Ceramic Brussels art fair, where Monneraud is represented by Paris’s Arsenic gallery. instagram.com/jacquesmonneraud.
