Etai & Felipe Pantone: Parallel Practices: Tailored Structures & Kinetic Surfaces
LOS ANGELES CA | albertz benda is thrilled to present Parallel Practices: Tailored Structures & Kinetic Surfaces, the first exhibition between Felipe Pantone and Etai set in albertz benda’s Los Angeles house gallery. Opening July 17 and on view through August 8, Parallel Practices: Tailored Structures & Kinetic Surfaces is a dynamic and highly anticipated exhibition uniting Felipe Pantone, internationally recognized for his groundbreaking explorations of color, movement, and visual systems, with Etai, a rising and highly sought-after voice whose practice operates at the intersection of fashion and design. Set within the domestic architecture of albertz benda Los Angeles, the exhibition brings together Pantone’s wall-based artworks and a series of collaborative design pieces presented throughout the gallery, housed in a mid-century modern home. Through their distinct yet converging practices, the artists’ questions of use, intimacy, and lived experience, positioning each work as part of an interconnected artistic system rather than a singular objects.
While rooted in different disciplines, both artists share a commitment to craft, precision, and the productive use of tradition as a working tool rather than a constraint. Rather than approaching collaboration as a stylistic fusion, Pantone and Etai engage in a process of structural dialogue, one that preserves the authorship and methodologies of each practice while allowing for moments of friction, overlap, and translation.
The exhibition debuts a new body of collaborative design pieces developed by Etai and Pantone. Beginning with mid-century furniture sourced across Los Angeles, Etai digitally maps and reworks each object as the basis for transformation. Pantone designs custom fabric elements, produced by the Italian textile house Limonta, which are incorporated through a process of deconstruction and reconstruction. The collaborative works emerge through a negotiated balance where systems of design, image-making, and material production are continually tested and recalibrated. The resulting works integrate contemporary imagery with classic design structures, reimagining each object while preserving its original logic.
Alongside the reimagined design objects, Pantone’s wall-based kinetic works function as both visual anchors and conceptual accelerators within the exhibition. Their optical effects driven by rhythm, repetition, and velocity echo broader systems of data flow, digital circulation, and contemporary visual consumption. Their chromatic structures and surface effects establish a visual language that is carried into the printed fabrics used throughout the exhibition.
Presented in close dialogue, Pantone’s artworks and the collaborative design pieces form a unified environment across the gallery. Furniture and wall-based works are arranged as an interconnected system rather than as discrete elements, emphasizing continuity, exchange, and visual coherence across media.
Through a sustained exchange between disciplines, Parallel Practices: Tailored Structures & Kinetic Surfaces reframes collaboration as a generative force that expands the possibilities of both art and design.
