TIMELESS
At SHIN Gallery, decades of KOOL KOOR’s practice occupied the same present: painting, early visual language, sound, furniture and functional design.
Across time
TIMELESS collapsed chronology. Historical works and drawings met contemporary painting and objects, allowing ideas conceived in different decades to exist together as one evolving visual language.
The exhibition returned that continuum to New York, the city where KOOL KOOR’s artistic journey began.
Sound / 50
KK MEGABOOM — 2023. A series of 50 handmade, fully functioning high-fidelity Bluetooth boomboxes, created to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Hip Hop. Each object brings sound, painting and design together in a functional work.
TIMELESS ONE
The TIMELESS ONE chair began with a dream decades before it was produced. KOOL KOOR drew the form and made small models, but the design remained unrealized until an encounter with the work of Cleto Munari through his gallery in Verona brought the idea back into the present.
Built by the design studios of Cleto Munari in Italy, two TIMELESS ONE chairs were presented in the exhibition — an idea conceived decades earlier finally entering physical space.
Basketball / design
A collaboration with BGBL Bouncing Bags / Elisabetta Viola transformed vintage leather basketballs into functional designer handbags. After meeting Viola at a Milan trade fair connecting art, fashion and sport, KOOL KOOR sourced vintage leather basketballs from the Rucker basketball system in New York.
The balls travelled to Brussels, where he customized them by hand using Italian leather shoe-colouring products, and then to Treviso, where Viola transformed them into handbags. Presented at TIMELESS and worn during the opening, the works move from sport to painting to fashion without losing the history of the original object.