Tjep.Cubism

Frank Tjepkema’s provoca­tive work is found at scales as dif­fer­ent as jew­el­ry and land­scape, and is installed in venues from gal­leries to air­ports. Since found­ing his stu­dio, Tjep., in 2001, the Ams­ter­dam-based designer’s projects, such as Bronze Age Fur­ni­ture, Reces­sion Chair, Bling Bling and Ooqst, have been pre­sent­ed in lead­ing gal­leries and muse­ums internationally.

Wolf-Gor­don Design Stu­dio col­lab­o­rat­ed with Tjep­ke­ma on ​“Tjep.Cubism” — a col­lec­tion of four wall­cov­er­ings, an uphol­stery tex­tile, and a sheer drap­ery tex­tile. A play­ful ref­er­ence to the ear­ly 20^th cen­tu­ry cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non, Czech Cubism, this col­lec­tion fea­tures strik­ing geo­met­ric pat­terns that use an iso­met­ric rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a cube as the point of departure.

Tjep­ke­ma began with Basis, a two-dimen­sion­al matrix cube design for a solu­tion-dyed nylon/​rayon/​cotton blend uphol­stery tex­tile that uti­lizes weave struc­tures to impart depth and three-dimen­sion­al­i­ty. From there, he designed the fol­low­ing pat­terns: Osmo­sis, a Type II wall­cov­er­ing with a large scale wave-like pat­tern­ing achieved by vary­ing line weights of the cube design; Meta­mor­pho­sis, an olefin/​polyester tex­tile wall­cov­er­ing that uses a ​“weath­er­ing” of the Basis pat­tern in columns that fade in and out of the weave struc­ture; and Con­nec­tions, which decon­structs and recom­pos­es the orig­i­nal pat­tern at a small scale, cre­at­ing a visu­al tex­ture on Type II vinyl.

“ I chose the most fun­da­men­tal archi­tec­tur­al shape as a start­ing point for the new col­lec­tion: the cube. From there, my chal­lenge was to add poet­ry, cre­ativ­i­ty, and dynam­ics to the most for­mal archi­tec­tur­al shape imag­in­able — an invi­ta­tion to break away from for­mal­i­ty and live to the fullest.”

—Frank Tjep­ke­ma, prin­ci­pal of Tjep.

Tak­ing the Basis design even fur­ther afield are: Frag­men­ta­tion, a gos­samer-like, Tre­vi­ra CS sheer drap­ery tex­tile that floats planes of the cubes in alter­nate­ly dense agglom­er­a­tions and emp­ty space; and, Baroque, a dig­i­tal print wall­cov­er­ing on Mylar, which sees Tjep­ke­ma exe­cut­ing a hero­ic merging/​decomposition of a damask motif into the cube ele­ments. Because it is dig­i­tal­ly print­ed, the scale and col­or of Baroque can be cus­tomized by WG Cus­toms Lab.

In April 2015, Tjep.Cubism made its inter­na­tion­al debut at the Milan Salone in the Spazio Rossana Orlan­di. The col­lec­tion was intro­duced in the US at Neo­Con®, Chica­go, June 2015.