“Forest for the Trees” - a solo exhibition of Daniel Michalik’s work - is an immersive love letter to cork in the form of furniture, small objects, material stories, and other forms of material-focused research.
Daniel is a Brooklyn-based designer and educator who has been working exclusively with cork for over 20 years. This singular material has guided a deep design process that often results in furniture and objects for interior and exterior spaces. Just as often, the process produces non-functional explorations, material experiences and new forms of knowledge.
Cork is a material that fosters life in its symbiotic relationship with human design and industry. It is a wood-like material that comes from a tree, but instead of being felled for its material, the tree lives on to produce more cork. And so the forest prospers, sequestering carbon, fortifying soil and mycorrhizal networks and protecting the life within. Cork as a material does not exist for our comfort alone. Cork provides for humans and in so doing, humans provide for the forest.
The furniture, objects and other materials featured in this exhibition propose a new reality in how we think of materials for furniture and human space in general. It will tell a full picture of cork and a designer’s powerful love for a single material and the natural systems and human communities that produce it.
