Aurel Basedow AKB 21 91
Aurel K. Basedow employs a variety of skills that he has acquired over the past 30 years: carpentry, crafts, dyeing, and design, to create his large scale mixed media abstract paintings. Seemingly spontaneous and complex, the unique artworks express an almost meditative energy, maintaining a balance of chaos and control. Basedow's paintings, which have a strong connection to Abstract Expressionism, play with superimpositions. He considers resin his true symbolic signature material. Each composition is the product of multiple layers of mixed media, built up and sealed in place by layers of thick resin. The geometric lines, the transfer of pigments, the brush strokes: each gesture is a result of the previous one creating a final collage like a visual representation of time. The artist uses Afghan, Moroccan and Persian rugs, cement, paint, photos and drawings — the result of continuous research. Each of his paintings is living matter in continuous evolution. Basedow says, "It is thanks to resin that the works reflect the outside world, act as a mirror to those who observe them, and become a metaphor for looking inward."

Molly Hatch Ducere, 2023
Molly Hatch’s ceramic wall installations may best represent the “grey space” between fine art, contemporary design, and craft that has become de rigueur for museum collections and modern collectors. Using ceramic surfaces as both her canvas and subject matter, she appropriates and re-contextualizes historic pattern and imagery across compositions of hand-painted earthenware plates, the glazed surfaces of the plates collectively become a fragmented canvas for her delicate, painterly re-renderings. Ducere is based on a pair of Asian-inspired Minton “cloisonné” ware, designed by Christopher Dresser, c.1870.

Though the components of her works are, in effect, technically functional, they are ultimately not intended for use, but installed to be observed and studied. A set of formal and fine dinnerware is an anomaly to younger generations, having little or no importance to the relaxed and multicultural way that we now live our daily lives. What many museums hold in their archives can be hard for the public to appreciate.

Hatch has in effect “reset the table,” by breaking the patterns of tradition and skewing the dinner services of old. She transforms and deconstructs what was once everyday and craft-based, helping us look at formality, history, and class through a contemporary perspective. Her process involves enlarging familiar patterns and motifs from traditional ceramics, textiles, fine art painting, and illustration, digitally igniting them in color, scale, and composition to create a new hybrid pattern. The precise balance of old and new opens a space to acknowledge our evolution in the 21st century in relation to aesthetics and ritual.

In the past decade, Hatch has become synonymous with contemporary ceramics, continuing her exploration of these methods and themes by applying them across an ever-evolving catalog of forms – plates, cubic vases with negative space imagery, pyramid forms that become three dimensional ceramic lenticulars. Her work has exhibited both nationally and internationally garnering her a loyal and fervent following.

Maarten Vrolijk Sakura TRP23014, NL, 2023
Amsterdam-based artist and designer Maarten Vrolijk believes that art should make people’s everyday lives more beautiful through the many little details that evoke the unexpected. While strongly influenced by the natural world, Vrolijk is not on a quest to expose an imitation of the “real” world, but rather, is on an exploration of the simple, unequivocal, and often overlooked aspects: color, form, delicacy, strength, transparency, ephemerality, that provide a map to the fascinations we gravitate to when experiencing the world around us. 
The volatility in accomplishing the exceptional thickness of his vases creates a risky balance between strength and delicacy. The thermal stress caused when trying to equalize the interior and exterior temperature of the cooling vessels, is fraught with the propensity for breakage. The success of Vrolijk’s works lie in the crystalline clarity posed against their substantial physical impact.
However, Vrolijk’s greatest success is the organic nature that he maintains throughout the work. Each form has an eccentricity achievable only by the hand of the artist. The jewel-toned fragments, appearing like colorful melting ice or otherworldly barnacles seemingly attaching themselves to the central form, give way to an explosion of color. 
Vrolijk’s large-scale glass vessels have been collected and exhibited in several renowned international museums including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Groninger Museum. Todd Merrill Studio is pleased to be the exclusive representative for Vrolijk’s work in the Americas.

Maarten Vrolijk Sakura TRP22013, NL, 2023
Amsterdam-based artist and designer Maarten Vrolijk believes that art should make people’s everyday lives more beautiful through the many little details that evoke the unexpected. While strongly influenced by the natural world, Vrolijk is not on a quest to expose an imitation of the “real” world, but rather, is on an exploration of the simple, unequivocal, and often overlooked aspects: color, form, delicacy, strength, transparency, ephemerality, that provide a map to the fascinations we gravitate to when experiencing the world around us. 
The volatility in accomplishing the exceptional thickness of his vases creates a risky balance between strength and delicacy. The thermal stress caused when trying to equalize the interior and exterior temperature of the cooling vessels, is fraught with the propensity for breakage. The success of Vrolijk’s works lie in the crystalline clarity posed against their substantial physical impact.
However, Vrolijk’s greatest success is the organic nature that he maintains throughout the work. Each form has an eccentricity achievable only by the hand of the artist. The jewel-toned fragments, appearing like colorful melting ice or otherworldly barnacles seemingly attaching themselves to the central form, give way to an explosion of color. 
Vrolijk’s large-scale glass vessels have been collected and exhibited in several renowned international museums including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Groninger Museum. Todd Merrill Studio is pleased to be the exclusive representative for Vrolijk’s work in the Americas.

Maarten Vrolijk Sakura TRP23011, NL, 2023
Amsterdam-based artist and designer Maarten Vrolijk believes that art should make people’s everyday lives more beautiful through the many little details that evoke the unexpected. While strongly influenced by the natural world, Vrolijk is not on a quest to expose an imitation of the “real” world, but rather, is on an exploration of the simple, unequivocal, and often overlooked aspects: color, form, delicacy, strength, transparency, ephemerality, that provide a map to the fascinations we gravitate to when experiencing the world around us. 
The volatility in accomplishing the exceptional thickness of his vases creates a risky balance between strength and delicacy. The thermal stress caused when trying to equalize the interior and exterior temperature of the cooling vessels, is fraught with the propensity for breakage. The success of Vrolijk’s works lie in the crystalline clarity posed against their substantial physical impact.
However, Vrolijk’s greatest success is the organic nature that he maintains throughout the work. Each form has an eccentricity achievable only by the hand of the artist. The jewel-toned fragments, appearing like colorful melting ice or otherworldly barnacles seemingly attaching themselves to the central form, give way to an explosion of color. 
Vrolijk’s large-scale glass vessels have been collected and exhibited in several renowned international museums including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Groninger Museum. Todd Merrill Studio is pleased to be the exclusive representative for Vrolijk’s work in the Americas.

Maarten Vrolijk Sakura TRP22011, NL, 2023
Amsterdam-based artist and designer Maarten Vrolijk believes that art should make people’s everyday lives more beautiful through the many little details that evoke the unexpected. While strongly influenced by the natural world, Vrolijk is not on a quest to expose an imitation of the “real” world, but rather, is on an exploration of the simple, unequivocal, and often overlooked aspects: color, form, delicacy, strength, transparency, ephemerality, that provide a map to the fascinations we gravitate to when experiencing the world around us. 
Vrolijk’s greatest success is the organic nature that he maintains throughout the work. Each form has an eccentricity achievable only by the hand of the artist. The jewel-toned fragments, appearing like colorful melting ice or otherworldly barnacles seemingly attaching themselves to the central form, give way to an explosion of color. 
Vrolijk’s large-scale glass vessels have been collected and exhibited in several renowned international museums including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Groninger Museum. Todd Merrill Studio is pleased to be the exclusive representative for Vrolijk’s work in the Americas.

Maarten Vrolijk Sakura TRP23010, NL, 2023
Amsterdam-based artist and designer Maarten Vrolijk believes that art should make people’s everyday lives more beautiful through the many little details that evoke the unexpected. While strongly influenced by the natural world, Vrolijk is not on a quest to expose an imitation of the “real” world, but rather, is on an exploration of the simple, unequivocal, and often overlooked aspects: color, form, delicacy, strength, transparency, ephemerality, that provide a map to the fascinations we gravitate to when experiencing the world around us. 
The volatility in accomplishing the exceptional thickness of his vases creates a risky balance between strength and delicacy. The thermal stress caused when trying to equalize the interior and exterior temperature of the cooling vessels, is fraught with the propensity for breakage. The success of Vrolijk’s works lie in the crystalline clarity posed against their substantial physical impact.
Vrolijk’s large-scale glass vessels have been collected and exhibited in several renowned international museums including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Groninger Museum. Todd Merrill Studio is pleased to be the exclusive representative for Vrolijk’s work in the Americas.

Maarten Vrolijk Sakura TRP23009, NL, 2023
Amsterdam-based artist and designer Maarten Vrolijk believes that art should make people’s everyday lives more beautiful through the many little details that evoke the unexpected. While strongly influenced by the natural world, Vrolijk is not on a quest to expose an imitation of the “real” world, but rather, is on an exploration of the simple, unequivocal, and often overlooked aspects: color, form, delicacy, strength, transparency, ephemerality, that provide a map to the fascinations we gravitate to when experiencing the world around us. 
The volatility in accomplishing the exceptional thickness of his vases creates a risky balance between strength and delicacy. The thermal stress caused when trying to equalize the interior and exterior temperature of the cooling vessels, is fraught with the propensity for breakage. The success of Vrolijk’s works lie in the crystalline clarity posed against their substantial physical impact.
However, Vrolijk’s greatest success is the organic nature that he maintains throughout the work. Each form has an eccentricity achievable only by the hand of the artist. The jewel-toned fragments, appearing like colorful melting ice or otherworldly barnacles seemingly attaching themselves to the central form, give way to an explosion of color. 
Vrolijk’s large-scale glass vessels have been collected and exhibited in several renowned international museums including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Groninger Museum. Todd Merrill Studio is pleased to be the exclusive representative for Vrolijk’s work in the Americas.

Maarten Vrolijk Sakura TRP23008, NL, 2023
Amsterdam-based artist and designer Maarten Vrolijk believes that art should make people’s everyday lives more beautiful through the many little details that evoke the unexpected. While strongly influenced by the natural world, Vrolijk is not on a quest to expose an imitation of the “real” world, but rather, is on an exploration of the simple, unequivocal, and often overlooked aspects: color, form, delicacy, strength, transparency, ephemerality, that provide a map to the fascinations we gravitate to when experiencing the world around us. 
The volatility in accomplishing the exceptional thickness of his vases creates a risky balance between strength and delicacy. The thermal stress caused when trying to equalize the interior and exterior temperature of the cooling vessels, is fraught with the propensity for breakage. The success of Vrolijk’s works lie in the crystalline clarity posed against their substantial physical impact.
However, Vrolijk’s greatest success is the organic nature that he maintains throughout the work. Each form has an eccentricity achievable only by the hand of the artist. The jewel-toned fragments, appearing like colorful melting ice or otherworldly barnacles seemingly attaching themselves to the central form, give way to an explosion of color. 
Vrolijk’s large-scale glass vessels have been collected and exhibited in several renowned international museums including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Groninger Museum. Todd Merrill Studio is pleased to be the exclusive representative for Vrolijk’s work in the Americas.

Maarten Vrolijk Sakura TRP23006, NL, 2023
Amsterdam-based artist and designer Maarten Vrolijk believes that art should make people’s everyday lives more beautiful through the many little details that evoke the unexpected. While strongly influenced by the natural world, Vrolijk is not on a quest to expose an imitation of the “real” world, but rather, is on an exploration of the simple, unequivocal, and often overlooked aspects: color, form, delicacy, strength, transparency, ephemerality, that provide a map to the fascinations we gravitate to when experiencing the world around us. 
Vrolijk’s greatest success is the organic nature that he maintains throughout the work. Each form has an eccentricity achievable only by the hand of the artist. The jewel-toned fragments, appearing like colorful melting ice or otherworldly barnacles seemingly attaching themselves to the central form, give way to an explosion of color. 
Vrolijk’s large-scale glass vessels have been collected and exhibited in several renowned international museums including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Groninger Museum. Todd Merrill Studio is pleased to be the exclusive representative for Vrolijk’s work in the Americas.

Maarten Vrolijk Sakura TRP 22012, NL, 2022
Amsterdam-based artist and designer Maarten Vrolijk believes that art should make people’s everyday lives more beautiful through the many little details that evoke the unexpected. While strongly influenced by the natural world, Vrolijk is not on a quest to expose an imitation of the “real” world, but rather, is on an exploration of the simple, unequivocal, and often overlooked aspects: color, form, delicacy, strength, transparency, ephemerality, that provide a map to the fascinations we gravitate to when experiencing the world around us. 
The volatility in accomplishing the exceptional thickness of his vases creates a risky balance between strength and delicacy. The thermal stress caused when trying to equalize the interior and exterior temperature of the cooling vessels, is fraught with the propensity for breakage. The success of Vrolijk’s works lie in the crystalline clarity posed against their substantial physical impact.
However, Vrolijk’s greatest success is the organic nature that he maintains throughout the work. Each form has an eccentricity achievable only by the hand of the artist. The jewel-toned fragments, appearing like colorful melting ice or otherworldly barnacles seemingly attaching themselves to the central form, give way to an explosion of color. 
Vrolijk’s large-scale glass vessels have been collected and exhibited in several renowned international museums including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Groninger Museum. Todd Merrill Studio is pleased to be the exclusive representative for Vrolijk’s work in the Americas.

Aurel Basedow AKB_20_23, IT, 2022
While visually maintaining a balance of chaos and control, Aurel K. Basedow’s paintings become a conversation between the rigid technical handling of resin, his chosen media, and the gestural possibilities of chromatic layering. Basedow most closely shares a kinship with 20th century painters like Mark Rothko, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, and Hermann Nitsch, whose paintings convey emotion and energy through physical and conceptual expression rather than realistic depiction or predetermined outcomes. Employing various mediums, the artist creates a vigorous composition of geometric lines and expressive brush strokes, with each gesture building on the previous one, separated by layers of clear resin. The use of multiple pigments and pouring techniques can create a fluid, dynamic appearance, with the colors mixing and blending together in unpredictable ways. Basedow leaves the edges of his paintings unrefined, revealing a visual history of each layered application. The use of resin also allows Basedow to incorporate unusual objects and textures, adding depth and complexity to his work. By concealing certain elements within the layers of resin, Basedow fosters a sense of mystery, encouraging viewers to engage with the work more deeply. 

Aurel Basedow AKN_23_11, IT, 2022
While visually maintaining a balance of chaos and control, Aurel K. Basedow’s paintings become a conversation between the rigid technical handling of resin, his chosen media, and the gestural possibilities of chromatic layering. Basedow most closely shares a kinship with 20th century painters like Mark Rothko, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, and Hermann Nitsch, whose paintings convey emotion and energy through physical and conceptual expression rather than realistic depiction or predetermined outcomes. Employing various mediums, the artist creates a vigorous composition of geometric lines and expressive brush strokes, with each gesture building on the previous one, separated by layers of clear resin. The use of multiple pigments and pouring techniques can create a fluid, dynamic appearance, with the colors mixing and blending together in unpredictable ways. Basedow leaves the edges of his paintings unrefined, revealing a visual history of each layered application. The use of resin also allows Basedow to incorporate unusual objects and textures, adding depth and complexity to his work. By concealing certain elements within the layers of resin, Basedow fosters a sense of mystery, encouraging viewers to engage with the work more deeply. 

Aurel Basedow FKB16__P19, IT, 2022
While visually maintaining a balance of chaos and control, Aurel K. Basedow’s paintings become a conversation between the rigid technical handling of resin, his chosen media, and the gestural possibilities of chromatic layering. Basedow most closely shares a kinship with 20th century painters like Mark Rothko, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, and Hermann Nitsch, whose paintings convey emotion and energy through physical and conceptual expression rather than realistic depiction or predetermined outcomes. Employing various mediums, the artist creates a vigorous composition of geometric lines and expressive brush strokes, with each gesture building on the previous one, separated by layers of clear resin. The use of multiple pigments and pouring techniques can create a fluid, dynamic appearance, with the colors mixing and blending together in unpredictable ways. Basedow leaves the edges of his paintings unrefined, revealing a visual history of each layered application. The use of resin also allows Basedow to incorporate unusual objects and textures, adding depth and complexity to his work. By concealing certain elements within the layers of resin, Basedow fosters a sense of mystery, encouraging viewers to engage with the work more deeply. 

Aurel Basedow AKB_23_10, IT, 2022
While visually maintaining a balance of chaos and control, Aurel K. Basedow’s paintings become a conversation between the rigid technical handling of resin, his chosen media, and the gestural possibilities of chromatic layering. Basedow most closely shares a kinship with 20th century painters like Mark Rothko, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, and Hermann Nitsch, whose paintings convey emotion and energy through physical and conceptual expression rather than realistic depiction or predetermined outcomes. Employing various mediums, the artist creates a vigorous composition of geometric lines and expressive brush strokes, with each gesture building on the previous one, separated by layers of clear resin. The use of multiple pigments and pouring techniques can create a fluid, dynamic appearance, with the colors mixing and blending together in unpredictable ways. Basedow leaves the edges of his paintings unrefined, revealing a visual history of each layered application. The use of resin also allows Basedow to incorporate unusual objects and textures, adding depth and complexity to his work. By concealing certain elements within the layers of resin, Basedow fosters a sense of mystery, encouraging viewers to engage with the work more deeply. 

Gary Magakis Bronze Low Console with Cabinets
Todd Merrill Studio has been the exclusive representative of Gary Magakis since 2013. Gary Magakis has built a cult-like following among top designers and collectors for his dynamic studio-driven metal furniture composed of seemingly simple geometric shapes.  His hand-formed bronze and steel designs have been featured in Financial Times, Architectural Digest, and Interiors Magazine, among others. Magakis’ works have been acquired by the National Museum of American Jewish History (Philadelphia), Delta Airlines (Cincinnati, Ohio), Coca-Cola (Atlanta, Ga.), and Citicorp (Cleveland, Ohio). 
When creating his bronze and steel sculptural furniture, Magakis looks to ancient metal arts, modern architecture, and the American Studio Craft Movement for inspiration. However, it is the work of Paul Evans that has left the most significant impression on Magakis. Evans’ unprecedented use of sculpted metal forms and patinated surfaces is reflected in Magakis’ Sculpted Metal series. Magakis’ distinct approach to design produces bold and dense geometric forms that exude a Modernist elegance and buoyancy. Magakis’ furniture is infused with a sense of place: his summer studio is a farm north of Scranton, Penn., at the foot of the Endless Mountains, and he attributes his fondness for cantilevered forms to Wright’s “Fallingwater,” in the southwestern corner of the state. 
Magakis received a degree in sculpture from Penn State and studied welding under the instruction of sculptor Klaus Ihlenfeld, Harry Bertoia’s former assistant.
As Magakis works on a commission basis, custom designs may be requested.

Alice Riehl Alter Ego, FR, 2022
By combining French decorative arts motifs, organic imagery, and contemporary motivations into visual poetry, French artist Alice Riehl’s porcelain wall murals exist in a liminal space between the natural and constructed worlds. Nurtured by the memory of her grandmother’s needlework, Riehl explores the combination of porcelain and lace, working the peculiar texture of this marriage into a personal signature of her botanical inspired ceramic works.
Seduced by porcelain’s softness, unpredictability, and capacity to reflect light, Riehl began training at French Ceramics Institute in Sèvres in 2003. The focus on hand modeling as her primary practice creates a freedom that opens expanding possibilities of expression, the relationship between the artist and the material becoming a fertile conversation. Porcelain has the peculiar property of distortion during firing, generating gentle shifts to the shape. This produces some complexity, but also breathes life into the unique sculptures.
Driven by the desire to widen her sculptural work, Riehl began translating her visual imagery into large scale murals in 2010. Heavily influenced by the large middle age tapestries prevalent throughout Europe, her works become a crossover between textile and porcelain. The surface detail of her representational subjects is substituted by grafted textures of lace and other delicate and disparate materials pressed into the soft clay resulting in an imagined form, something but familiar but surprising. Employing movement and asymmetry to compose imaginary panoramas, her works are composed of obvious, yet often abstract, references. Swaths of flora, botanicals, and oceanic life crawl across expansive surfaces equally fit for residential or public spaces.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
By combining French decorative arts motifs, organic imagery, and contemporary motivations into visual poetry, French artist Alice Riehl’s porcelain wall murals exist in a liminal space between the natural and constructed worlds. Nurtured by the memory of her grandmother’s needlework, Riehl explores the combination of porcelain and lace, working the peculiar texture of this marriage into a personal signature of her botanical inspired ceramic works.
Seduced by porcelain’s softness, unpredictability, and capacity to reflect light, Riehl began training at French Ceramics Institute in Sèvres in 2003. The focus on hand modeling as her primary practice creates a freedom that opens expanding possibilities of expression, the relationship between the artist and the material becoming a fertile conversation. Porcelain has the peculiar property of distortion during firing, generating gentle shifts to the shape. This produces some complexity, but also breathes life into the unique sculptures.
Driven by the desire to widen her sculptural work, Riehl began translating her visual imagery into large scale murals in 2010. Heavily influenced by the large middle age tapestries prevalent throughout Europe, her works become a crossover between textile and porcelain. The surface detail of her representational subjects is substituted by grafted textures of lace and other delicate and disparate materials pressed into the soft clay resulting in an imagined form, something but familiar but surprising. Employing movement and asymmetry to compose imaginary panoramas, her works are composed of obvious, yet often abstract, references. Swaths of flora, botanicals, and oceanic life crawl across expansive surfaces equally fit for residential or public spaces.

Alice Riehl Fugue, FR, 2022
By combining French decorative arts motifs, organic imagery, and contemporary motivations into visual poetry, French artist Alice Riehl’s porcelain wall murals exist in a liminal space between the natural and constructed worlds. Nurtured by the memory of her grandmother’s needlework, Riehl explores the combination of porcelain and lace, working the peculiar texture of this marriage into a personal signature of her botanical inspired ceramic works.
Driven by the desire to widen her sculptural work, Riehl began translating her visual imagery into large scale murals in 2010. Heavily influenced by the large middle age tapestries prevalent throughout Europe, her works become a crossover between textile and porcelain. The surface detail of her representational subjects is substituted by grafted textures of lace and other delicate and disparate materials pressed into the soft clay resulting in an imagined form, something but familiar but surprising. Employing movement and asymmetry to compose imaginary panoramas, her works are composed of obvious, yet often abstract, references. Swaths of flora, botanicals, and oceanic life crawl across expansive surfaces equally fit for residential or public spaces.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
By combining French decorative arts motifs, organic imagery, and contemporary motivations into visual poetry, French artist Alice Riehl’s porcelain wall murals exist in a liminal space between the natural and constructed worlds. Nurtured by the memory of her grandmother’s needlework, Riehl explores the combination of porcelain and lace, working the peculiar texture of this marriage into a personal signature of her botanical inspired ceramic works.
Seduced by porcelain’s softness, unpredictability, and capacity to reflect light, Riehl began training at French Ceramics Institute in Sèvres in 2003. The focus on hand modeling as her primary practice creates a freedom that opens expanding possibilities of expression, the relationship between the artist and the material becoming a fertile conversation. Porcelain has the peculiar property of distortion during firing, generating gentle shifts to the shape. This produces some complexity, but also breathes life into the unique sculptures.
Driven by the desire to widen her sculptural work, Riehl began translating her visual imagery into large scale murals in 2010. Heavily influenced by the large middle age tapestries prevalent throughout Europe, her works become a crossover between textile and porcelain. The surface detail of her representational subjects is substituted by grafted textures of lace and other delicate and disparate materials pressed into the soft clay resulting in an imagined form, something but familiar but surprising. Employing movement and asymmetry to compose imaginary panoramas, her works are composed of obvious, yet often abstract, references. Swaths of flora, botanicals, and oceanic life crawl across expansive surfaces equally fit for residential or public spaces.

Isaac Katz Levitaz Side Table, MX, 2021
Issac Katz’s dramatic polished bronze low table is molded and cast to simulate the supple draping of fabric casually cloaking a small round table. Despite being rendered in rigid bronze, one of the oldest used and strongest metals, Katz’s table exudes an enticing levity and functionality. The unlikely juxtaposition of material and form is evidence of the artist’s striking originality and wit, while the bronze’s rich tone and high mirror polish expresses an almost comically pop-art opulence.
With a focus on creating sublime pieces of functional and collectible design, artist Isaac Katz merges the art and design worlds into a seamless whole, create enduring works of beauty that provoke the viewer to examine what functional art can be. An exercise in pure aesthetic expression and the limitless potential of volume and light, Katz’s work taps into algorithmic processes intrinsic in the natural world – using and transmuting the physical laws that bind us, taking us on a journey to a universe where anything is possible. Combining form, function, and a playful and liberated approach towards geometry and abstraction, Katz Studio is a place of experimentation and discovery; where the boundless possibilities of Art and Design cohere into an integrated whole.

Isaac Katz Vela Low Table, MX, 2022
Issac Katz’s dramatic polished bronze low table is molded and cast to simulate the supple draping of fabric casually cloaking a low wide plinth. Despite being rendered in rigid bronze, one of the oldest used and strongest metals, Katz’s table exudes an enticing levity and functionality. The unlikely juxtaposition of material and form is evidence of the artist’s striking originality and wit, while the bronze’s rich tone and high mirror polish expresses an almost comically pop-art opulence.
With a focus on creating sublime pieces of functional and collectible design, artist Isaac Katz merges the art and design worlds into a seamless whole, create enduring works of beauty that provoke the viewer to examine what functional art can be. An exercise in pure aesthetic expression and the limitless potential of volume and light, Katz’s work taps into algorithmic processes intrinsic in the natural world – using and transmuting the physical laws that bind us, taking us on a journey to a universe where anything is possible. Combining form, function, and a playful and liberated approach towards geometry and abstraction, Katz Studio is a place of experimentation and discovery; where the boundless possibilities of Art and Design cohere into an integrated whole.

Maarten Vrolijk Helleborus, NL, 2021
Working across a myriad of fine art and craft disciplines, Maarten Vrolijk’s mixed media practice is remarkable for its consistency and fluidity.  A steady visual line can be drawn throughout his body of work. His paintings inform his glass works, which in turn are reflected in his ceramics. The composition of his paintings and textiles is laid out with the same meticulous planning as his glass vessels. Though mostly abstracted, his subject has been primarily focused on flowers and other flora. Sometimes expressive, as in his paintings, or distinctly graphic, as in his ceramics, Vrolijk explains, “To my mind, flowers are nature’s gems and have long been a recurrent inspiration in my designs: the bold tulip, the sculpted rose, the delicate lily.” 

Stefan Rurak Concrete and Steel Low Table No.9
The table tops of Rurak’s Action Series Low Tables feature his unique plates of individually hand-patinated steel. The smooth surface of the steel is populated with splashes and stains, finished with oil and buffed wax and then gilded along the edges in 24kt gold. The drum shaped base of the table is an assemblage of concrete, sand, rocks, pigment and paint applied with an expressionist rigor. Gold inlaid etchings are added impulsively, completing the work.
Todd Merrill Studio began representing Brooklyn based artist Stefan Rurak in 2019. Rurak’s furniture defies conventional boundaries – merging fine art aesthetics, modern conceptual design, and traditional, hand-made craftsmanship techniques. His evocative, one-of-a-kind works are the type of collectible pieces built to span generations. Working with a variety of materials – wood, cast concrete, and steel –  Rurak draws no distinction between art and design – the utilitarian becoming a canvas for his aesthetic endeavor. Each piece conveys movement, action, and intuition, providing a stark counterpoint to the meticulous construction and composition of the functional skeleton underneath. Throughout each piece is evidence of the artist at work. A cast concrete drawer face or a cabinet’s steel surface are punctuated with mark-making, fingerprints, free flowing swipes of color, all clearly bearing the hand of the artist.
Rurak’s unique aesthetic and process stems from a diverse range of media, ranging from things as conventional as drawing and painting to performance art. “The work is largely process oriented," he states, “Increasingly I became aware that the mediums I was drawn to, such as silkscreen printing and film photography were really a pursuit of a craft that relied on a skillset as well as a system of tools.”
Rurak’s work has found a strong audience with collectors and designers, and has been featured in LUXE Magazine, Surface, Interior Design, Architectural Digest, Elle Decoration, Interiors Magazine, and New York Cottages and Gardens.

Todd Merrill Wedge Sofa, USA, 2019

Maarten Vrolijk Blooming Terra MVC21004, NL, 2021
Amsterdam-based artist and designer Maarten Vrolijk believes that art should make people’s everyday lives more beautiful through the many little details that evoke the unexpected. While strongly influenced by the natural world, Vrolijk is not on a quest to expose an imitation of the “real” world, but rather, is on an exploration of the simple, unequivocal, and often overlooked aspects: color, form, delicacy, and strength that provide a map to the fascinations we gravitate to when experiencing the world around us.
His bombastic ceramic vessels have a distinct aliveness as a result of Vrolijk’s mastery of impulse and intuition. Heavily scored and expressively painted, each has a particular personality that is, at once, playful and defiant. His greatest success is the organic nature that he maintains throughout each work. Each form has an eccentricity achievable only by the hand of the artist. The otherworldly plant-like protrusions seemingly attaching themselves to or growing out of the ceramic vases, give way to an energetic rapture.
Vrolijk’s large-scale vessels have been collected and exhibited in several renowned international museums including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Groninger Museum. Todd Merrill Studio is pleased to be the exclusive representative for Vrolijk’s work in the Americas.

John Procario Freeform Series Light Sculpture XXII, USA, 2021
Procario’s sculptural lighting is composed of micro-laminated wood fused with LEDs. With a rough sketch in his mind, Procario freeform bends the wood into one of his signature undulating shapes. After months spent intentionally breaking wood—whether with a hydraulic press or simply his own strength—the designer gained a deep understanding of its structure and learned where to draw the line before hitting that breaking point. The process is a delicate one,“wood doesn’t always want to work with you when you are freeform bending so you have to work with it,” he says. “But I really enjoy that. Sometimes it takes you in new directions that would never have happened if everything was planned out. In this way, the artistic process becomes a collaboration between the artist and the wood’s respective personalities. The outcome is an organic, fluid design with a distinct sense of motion.

A growing list of high-end designers have begun including Procario’s large-scale commissions in both commercial and residential projects such as a monumental work installed in the lobby of the Kaufman Orginization’s Nelson Tower at 450 7th Avenue, in New York City. “These pieces use the same language,” says Procario. “But more space gives me more opportunity to play with the shapes.”

Procario’s works have been featured in the New York Times, Architectural Digest, Design Milk, Interior Design Magazine, and Luxe Magazine. In the summer of 2018, Procario was invited to produce a unique work for a multi-artist installation at Philip Johnson’s Glass House.