The designers Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin – who operate under the name Formafantasma – have seized every opportunity to confront the ecological and political responsibilities of their discipline. In the last decade, their research-based practice has often called on materials that remind us of our precarious place in the world: lava and volcanic ash, animal bladders. Charcoal. Wood. A fortnight before the UK lockdown was announced, the pair opened Cambio at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery – a tender show that laid their ongoing investigations into the governance of the timber industry bare. Behind bolted doors, an archive of rare hardwoods first exhibited in the Great Exhibition of 1851 sat gathering dust; the devices spewing an aroma of wet forest earth switched off for months. The show lives on as an orgy of pixels online.

A post-pandemic world is a world full of questions. What do Formafantasma do now?

At the helm of London’s most exciting gallery, art dealer Sadie Coles is a true pioneer of support, having been at the forefront of a flourishing and complex contemporary art landscape for decades.

To learn more about the compelling exhibition and gain Coles’ insight into the art world’s future, Keshav Anand spoke with the pioneering gallerist.

Ahead of her upcoming exhibition at David Zwirner in Hong Kong, Katherine Bernhardt speaks with Modern Matter about her creative process and the sensorial power of colour.

Known for her vibrant paintings and wry visual lexicon, Bernhardt turns her attention in this latest body of work to characters from the Japanese media franchise Pokémon. The series draws on the aesthetics and pop-art sensibility of individual playing cards, transforming the bold graphics and playful iconography.

Data is data and art is art and everything else is everything else is everything else.

Prét-à-Patria uniquely speaks about your background as a fashion designer by tackling complex social ideas through clothing and other mediums like sculpture and performance — all of which you masterfully incorporate in the presentation of collections. This time, you present it as an exhibition.

Fifteen years ago, in the opening talk of the First Congress and Exhibition (Budapest, 1989), I suggested considering the concept of symmetry as a bridge, not the only bridge, but one possible bridge, between the two hemispheres of our split culture: