By Ines Min
Staff reporter
This isn't just an art gallery in one of Seoul's ritziest neighborhoods. In fact, it feels more like a fashionable stranger's living room where the furnishings are all immaculate _ surprisingly so, considering that the wares are original Bauhaus and other modern classics dating from as early at the 1920s.
A private collection of rare furniture opened Thursday at the PKM Trinity Gallery in Cheongdam-dong. For designs by Charles & Ray Eames and Egon Eiermann _ typically seen through photographs or at a distance of several feet, specified by marking tape _ the exhibition brings a unique opportunity to visitors. That beautiful, wicker-backed 1928 chair designed by Marcel Breuer? You can actually sit in it.
From the tables to kettles, light fixtures to wall shelving, the entirety of the extensive collection is owned by Sabo, who amassed the exhibited 50 works over the past two decades.
``I think that a chair has to be sat in to become stronger, for its back to become comfortable,'' said Sabo, who has been collecting pieces since 1990, at a press conference last week. Having studied in Germany as a young man, the then-student began by picking up furniture discarded in the street under the cover of night. Soon, he was working seven to eight part-time jobs, in order to fund his passion at flea markets and shops.
The exhibition brings together designs from both the initial Bauhaus era and the following modern classicism it inspired. A lamp from the 1970s Italian space age movement stands next to pieced, mounted wall-shelves by 1950s Danish interior architect Poul Cadovius.
``Although they're all from different times, the reason why they all complement one another is because their 'mother' is Bauhaus,'' Sabo said with a laugh.
Though alike in innovation, the individuality of each piece stands as a symbol of its history. Bauhaus emerged from the expressionist era of post-World War I Germany, a rebellion against the censorship of the state. Experimental, functional, clean lines distinguished the design movement, which sought to combine aesthetic elements from architecture and interior decoration to typography.