The sound composition of Artūrs Liepiņš, which fills the exhibition space, gives a special atmosphere to German Ermić’s exhibition. It was created three years ago, when the designer, in collaboration with the social network company Instagram, created the pavilion “Where the rainbow ends” for the festival of creativity in Cannes, France.
He has also designed the interior of the Heineken head office in the Netherlands, the interior of a subway station in Seoul, South Korea, the design of the Zurich Congress House restaurant, installations for fashion brand stores in London and Amsterdam, but interiors are only one facet of his activity. He creates furniture, installations and various other basically exclusive design objects, mainly working with glass.
His mastery in working with colors is amazing, he admits himself – he feels color almost as a physical material:
“I have always been fascinated by the idea of what color can do, how it can affect our perception, how color can be played with, how a color can be highlighted or, on the contrary, lose its meaning.
Along with this, I have always been interested in optical illusions that can be achieved through perception by tricking the eye. These are things that really fascinate me, and I try to embody some of it in my work, experimenting with material where I can make people see and feel things differently. That’s the feeling I often go by.”
The exhibition summarizes German Ermić’s work so far, it has two parts. The first looks into his creative laboratory and his journey as a designer. It started in Latvia as a graphic designer, continued in the Netherlands, at the Eindhoven Design Academy, but in 2014 he founded his own studio in Amsterdam. Soon the first collection “Shaping Color” was presented at the Milan fair.
German Ermich’s “Ombre” chair at the “Flowing” exhibition Photo: Baiba Kušķe / Latvian Radio
A few years later he was already noticed internationally, but a major turning point in his career was the “Ombre” glass chair, which was a modern interpretation of the iconic “Glass Chair” by Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata. The “Ombre” chair toured the world’s most important design exhibitions, influential designers Stefan Sagmeister and Jessica Walsh included it in the list of the world’s most beautiful things. The creation of the famous chair can be traced in the exhibition. German Ermich continues:
“I had decided that I want to create a chair that is defined by color, how you can look at a chair from the aspect of color and how you can experience it in three dimensions. In this case, glass is just a medium.”
Photo: Baiba Kušķe / Latvian Radio Photo: Baiba Kušķe / Latvian Radio Photo: Baiba Kušķe / Latvian Radio
In the second part of the exhibition, some of the brightest objects of German Ermich’s design can be seen. Among them are “Isometric Mirrors”, in which he applies his interest in optical illusions, a chair called “Sunburst”, whose color saturation seems to capture the blazing light of the sun, the installation “Shaping color”, which explores the relationship between color and form, also a sound sculpture that transforms the touches of human hands into music.
The artist explains: “This is a sound sculpture in which I interpret the circle of fifths, giving it such a physical form. The basic idea of this project is to create a tactile experience for sound. Touching each of the stages of the object, a sound appears, and then you simultaneously feel its shape and you hear it. Something intangible connects in that tangible, physical, material world.”
Sound sculpture by designer Germanas Ermić at the exhibition “Floating” Photo: Baiba Kušķe / Latvian Radio
Working with intangible phenomena is one of the most characteristic themes in German Ermić’s works and one of the reasons that also makes them so magical – admits the curator of the exhibition, Evelina Ozola:
“For example, how to capture a sunset in a physical object or what the shape of musical sounds might be, working with color as a three-dimensional spatial material that can be kneaded and shaped almost by hand. These are characteristic threads that appear in his works.”
German Ermich’s personal exhibition “Floating” can be seen at the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design until the end of May.
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