Gallery: 'Unusual' Doesn't Even Begin to Describe This Exhibition

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    Guang Xu
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    "Progressland" is an unusual show at an unusual gallery. Chamber, In New York City, invites designers to do year-long curating residencies. This is the last show by photographer Andrew Zuckerman. Here, the “EVA Space Suit Arm and Glove Assembly," a touch-sensitive glove designed to be worn on Mars, by Brooklyn-based Final Frontier Studio.
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    Guang Xu
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    Zuckerman says "Progressland" is all about “the genesis of exploration and the human desire to look beyond what we know.” This Globe-Trotter "Space-Case" is his own creation. It's a cheeky prop, about a suitcase that future travelers will take to outer space, to remember where they came from.
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    Guang Xu
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    The exhibit gets it name from Walt Disney. In 1964, for the New York World’s Fair, Disney created the original Progressland: a domed, three-story pavilion designed to show off how the electricity industry could advance human society.
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    The architectural model for the original Progressland can be seen now at Chamber, until sometime in August.
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    Another object for the future: Peter Pincus’s urn. The New York ceramicist made the white vase and decorated it with a band of rainbow-hued stripes, to point out that an urn should celebrate a life, rather than mourn it.
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    Alexandra Kehayoglou's "Perito Moreno" sheep wool rug has an icy, terrestrial look to it. It was made for the exhibit.
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    Ian Stell's "RollBottom" chair has a bit of a trick to it...
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    The desk cover rolls back and wiggles along the chair frame, to create a seat.
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    Frank Austin, inventor of the ant farm, created this "Ant Palace" in 1931. You could look at a formicarium as a smaller version of Progressland, or any kind human-made biosphere.
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    Guang Xu
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    ka Künzel has several pieces in the show. Each sculpture is a piece of glassware she inherited from her grandmothers, re-blown into a new glass chamber—like a preservation capsule for objects from the past.
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    "Transparent Speaker" by People People shows off the machinery of a speaker, by including no details other than the working parts.
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    Guang Xu
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    From 1960, a "Mock-up Hasselblad 500 with Telescopic Lens," by Grumman Aircraft 106257 Eng. Corp.
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    Guang Xu
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    Konstantin Grcic's "360 Chair" is a design from 2009 that's meant to neither chair nor stool—it's something in between.
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    The exhibit, seen in full.
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