Benjamin Kicic

Born in Sarajevo and raised in New England, Brooklyn-based designer Benjamin Kicic works at the junction of functionalism and cultural semiotics. The RISD-trained talent’s oeuvre straddles between the contract market – most notably for New York brand Good Thing – and custom commissions while revealing a keen understanding of visual analysis and metaphoric irony. After discreetly combining various visual references, materials and production processes into minimalistic forms, Kicic adds contrasting elements; moments of intensity that challenge our preconceptions of everyday objects.

Developed in 2016, Basal Table is a statement piece that pulls a common archetype out of ubiquity. By using roughly-cast bronze to connect the table’s planar top and legs, Kicic makes the overlooked reality of joinery explicit. Like Postmodernist Robert Venturi and Alessandro Mendini before him, the designer positions Fiber Table as both an ode to, and satire of the past; in this case Rococo-style furniture, itself appropriated by Anglo-American colonialists. Rather than using solid planes of material, he opted for a metal contour form and wrapped fibre cord. The result reveals one condition of structure but perhaps more importantly eludes to the instability of nostalgic reflection. It is unequivocally a carbon copy. True to the contemporary zeitgeist, Coil Pot reveals how new 3D-printing technology can mimic or translate age-old craft techniques. The vessel blends both types of production.