Kiko Lopez: Smoke and Mirrors

2022

Status: Completed
Location: New York CIty, USA
Client: Maison Gerard, Kiko Lopez
Design: AtelierTek Architects (Daniel Hammerman, Serge Drouin)

AtelierTek collaborated with artist Kiko Lopez and gallery Maison Gerard on the first solo exhibition of the Puerto Rican Frenchman’s work in New York in Fall 2022. Kiko has reinvented the lost art of hand-silvering with contemporary technique and aesthetic.  For this exhibit, we sought to elevate and offset his unique, mirrored pieces, but also to create interplay of reflection and reality, light and shadow, black and white, that would bring his work to life, along with the space around and between.  

Belying a complexity of engineering and execution, simple painted plywood panels levitate in the space, suspended on thin cables with elegant, efficient hardware (by Takiya) from a concealed grid of hang points at the ceiling and tethered to the floor.  Rather than thick braced or ballasted partitions, impossibly slender flying planes give just the right visual frame to the pieces to give them presence yet minimal footprint and obstruction in the space.  The system developed for the Kiko show has been embraced by Maison Gerard for future displays and exhibitions as well.   

AtelierTek collaborated with artist Kiko Lopez and gallery Maison Gerard on the first solo exhibition of the Puerto Rican Frenchman’s work in New York in Fall 2022. Kiko has reinvented the lost art of hand-silvering with contemporary technique and aesthetic.  For this exhibit, we sought to elevate and offset his unique, mirrored pieces, but also to create interplay of reflection and reality, light and shadow, black and white, that would bring his work to life, along with the space around and between.  

Belying a complexity of engineering and execution, simple painted plywood panels levitate in the space, suspended on thin cables with elegant, efficient hardware (by Takiya) from a concealed grid of hang points at the ceiling and tethered to the floor.  Rather than thick braced or ballasted partitions, impossibly slender flying planes give just the right visual frame to the pieces to give them presence yet minimal footprint and obstruction in the space.  The system developed for the Kiko show has been embraced by Maison Gerard for future displays and exhibitions as well.