» Black Rubber Collection, 2019

Brian Thoreen Black Rubber Collection, 2019

Artist and designer, Brian Thoreen shares his radical relationship with materials and materiality by playfully blurring the lines between functional and nonfunctional work. Born in California in 1979, Brian Thoreen grew up in construction, metal fabrication and art installation. These experiences informed a peculiar and intimate understanding of space and material interactions. Currently working between Mexico City and Paris, his practice balances the precarious tensions between simplicity and sophistication, discourse and form, materiality and impressive evocations. Rubber, wax, paper, silicone, hammered copper, brass or bronze - Brian Thoreen questions the very integrity of the materials he chooses to explore in order to bend them to his powerful vision. Challenging the idea of harmony as a beauty norm constitutes the center of his questioning as an artist. By flirting with the sensual as well as with the objectionable, Brian Thoreen celebrates the strangeness within the familiar, leaving his viewers with an evocative yet indelible sense of awe and uncanniness. He is one of the founding partners of the Mexico City gallery MASA and the experimental glass studio Vissio. His works have been exhibited and sold throughout the world in art and design galleries alike.