Luxembourg’s Galerie Liberté debuts with the “Ore” group exhibition  

The new collectible gallery and specialized design showroom, the first of its kind in the city, opens with a showcase highlighting its astute understanding of experimental yet refined contemporary design culture.  

Bringing together internationally recognized talents Paris-based Wendy Andreu, New York’s Umberto Bellardi Ricci (UBR Studio), and Lisbon-based French duo Studio Haos, the Ore group exhibition inaugurates Luxembourg’s first collectible gallery and specialized design showroom, Galerie Liberté. On view from 12 October to 15 January 2025, the show includes recently completed limited-edition, serial, and one-off furnishings and accessories that allude back to the Western European nation’s deeply rooted and globally impactful industrial heritage: the production of steel long integral to the construction of skyscrapers and other structures around the world.  

While UBR Studio principal Bellardi Ricci, who was raised in Luxembourg, shrewdly implements the refractive qualities of metal in monumental luminaires, Studio Haos riffs on mechanized production in “crafted” metal tables and armchairs with unexpected proportions. Through extensive hands-on research, Andreu seeks to find innovative uses for long-established craft techniques as well as industrial materials like steel. Widely mined in the region, ore is the mineral from which most metals are derived and, like these practices, transcends borders. Operating in different parts of the world and often away from their countries of origin, all three exhibiting studios are able to distil the various sources of inspiration they’ve encountered in refined yet distinctive designs.  

“These talents exemplify the best in contemporary craft-led design and the ability to reinterpret age-old artisanal techniques in new and relevant applications,” says Galerie Liberté founder Françoise Kuth. “Our focus on craft production, a certain knowledge and set of skills, rather than traditional industrial design is how we hope to differentiate ourselves as a gallery and showroom. This also ensures that the tightly curated selection of bold designs we plan to exhibit are idiosyncratic and not replicated by others.”  

Works on view for the inaugural exhibition will include Studio Haos’s Aluminum Coffee Table and Armchair; select pieces from UBR Studio’s Spira, Mano, and Luca collections; Andreu’s Aircraft Table, Staple Console, and 8 Legged Stool On Wheels. The showcase of her tapestries reveals that the Ore exhibition’s guiding theme can be expressed in more nuanced ways, with unexpected processes and materials other than metal.   

It’s opportune that Galerie Liberté should be located in a 1915 Art Nouveau building when considering the theme behind the inaugural Ore exhibition. The proponent of this historicist yet early Modern architecture and design style sought to mitigate rapidly advancing industrialization through much more controlled craft processes and bespoke applications; a preoccupation shared by the show’s three exhibitors. 

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Written by Adrian Madlener

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