that year. And, as he says, his A-Cold-Wall* catwalk shows were, in effect, large-scale sculptural installations.Earlier this year, under the SR_A umbrella, he created three chairs, ‘Recovery’, ‘Signal-3’ and ‘Trauma’, which were later acquired by Friedman Benda gallery in New York. Never short of conceptual ambition, Ross conceived the collection as tracking 300 years of Black experience, of wrenching dislocation, shattered and recovered identity, and class struggle.
‘I’ve been working on this privately for the last five or six years. The pull of the art and design space is really having time to think, and time to iterate, to note and jot and sketch. The time to add to a cultural dialogue’ – Samuel Ross If the harder materiality of the new pieces marks Ross’ new commitment to sculptural investigations, they are also part of a long-term conversation about craft, engineering and technology that began in his childhood. ‘I think a lot has to do with perspective and identity,’ he says. ‘I was raised by two artists. My mother is a painter, my father a stained-glass artist and a painter. Both went to art school and both dabbled in design.
‘Rupture’ chair. The design also features on Samuel Ross’ limited-edition cover for us this month. Made of white marble and orange steel, it reimagines traditional West African seating to explore the region’s influence on Western cubism andThis matching of industrial processes and craft processes has been a long-term concern for Ross: ‘I’ve been working on this privately for the last five or six years.
Ross has always understood the potential of material as message. He had been working as an artist and a freelance designer and created a streetwear label 2wnt4 as a side project when, in 2013, Virgil Abloh messaged him on Instagram. Abloh was working on his Pyrex Vision project and was interested in Ross’ work. Ross interned with Abloh during the inception of Off-White, before advancing to become design assistant at both Off-White and Kanye West’s creative studio, Donda.