Antiqua returns to Maison Bardot for the summer season with by the sea, the title conceived to frame and accompany the gallery’s presence on the island throughout June, July, and August. Following its first intervention in the space during the summer of 2024, the Athens-based gallery renews its engagement with a setting that moves beyond the conventional definition of a gallery, existing instead as a hybrid environment where hospitality, research, and exhibition-making converge.
Far removed from the neutrality of the contemporary white cube, Maison Bardot absorbs the atmospheric and material language of Cycladic architecture: lime and clay surfaces, pigmented terracotta floors, soft curvilinear volumes, and a diffused light that continuously dissolves the boundary between interior and exterior. This tactile and porous condition becomes central to Antiqua’s curatorial approach, prompting a reconsideration of how historical design can be experienced outside the traditional gallery framework.
Within this context, twentieth-century furniture, seating, and lighting pieces are presented not as decorative elements, but as autonomous presences, almost sculptural forms, capable of establishing a direct relationship with architecture, light, and the temporal rhythm of the island itself. Rather than constructing a staged interior, Antiqua reflects on how historical design may be displaced from both domestic and museological conventions, allowing objects to acquire a different intensity through space, atmosphere, and material permanence.
More than a design exhibition, the project proposes a system of resonances: worn surfaces, patinas, proportions, and formal tensions enter into dialogue with the architectural matter of the space, suggesting an idea of preciousness that is not ornamental, but rooted in duration, memory, and transformation. AsCarlo Scarpasuggested, matter is never merely a support, but a language capable of continuously producing meaning over time.
Beginning on July 18, the project expands through a collaboration withMassimo De Carloand the participation of artistBrian Rochefort (Rhode Island, USA, 1985). Rochefort’s ceramic works, characterized by volcanic surfaces, layered chromatic textures, and unstable organic forms, enter into dialogue with Antiqua’s historical design selection, further amplifying the project’s reflection on materiality as a living and transformative condition. Conceived as an evolving summer project rather than a singular exhibition format,by the seaunfolds as a spatial and atmospheric narrative in which art, historical design, and architecture coexist within a fluid and non-hierarchical relationship, deeply connected to the landscape and temporality of Antiparos.
About
Antiqua is an Athens based gallery specializing in Historical Design and Masterpieces of the 20th century. Founded in 1954 by Yiannis and Aliki Yiannoukou and then run by descent by their two children, Elizabeth and Thanassis, ANTIQUA was established for over five decades as one of the most prestigious antiques stores in Athens.
Since the early 2000’s, Yagos Kounelis – Elizabeth’s son – gradually integrated within the gallery’s interests, 20th century Mid Century Modern Design and by 2013 ANTIQUA was officially focusing on Historical Design Furniture, Lighting and Ceramics from Masters of Design of the Post War period. In 2016 ANTIQUA was relocated in Kolonaki district, continuing the promotion of high-quality Historical Design within the Greek capital: from well-known Design Masters, such as Carlo Mollino, Gio Ponti, Ettore Sottsass, Angelo Lelii, Poul Kjaerhholm and Pierre Paulin, to Greek designers with an international presence such as Philolaos Tloupas, Yannis Moralis and Eleni Vernadaki, the gallery covers the areas of furniture, lighting, ceramics and sculpture.
The gallery’s mission is to present important figures of the 20th century’s design scene through thematic installations, editorial projects and publications. In addition, the curatorial selection includes a particular attention in researching and developing Greek architects and local artistic figures of the period, promoting them in the international market of collectible design. ANTIQUA’s program also includes a section of Contemporary Editions, called “The Contemporary Project” which develops and highlights the work of emerging artists and designers, always in dialogue with Historical Design.
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