New York, New York – Emma Scully Gallery is pleased to present “Mirror at Dusk,” a considered collection of works from Belgian conceptual designer and artist Nel Verbeke, opening on February 20, 2025.
The series features delicate and allegorical objects through which Verbeke explores the concept of dusk — the fleeting moment when light diminishes and darkness begins. The designer views this transition as significant and translates it into tangible forms.
Illuminated by either a vertical tube or circular light source, each hand-blown and silver-coated glass piece reflects one’s interaction with herself and the environment. Embracing twilight, Verbeke creates a stillness that fosters contemplation, allowing the viewer to confront both the light and darkness within. The tarnished surfaces of the mirrors, marked by time and weathered silver, offer a reflective experience.
“The dome-like shape and luminescence of this mirror could be interpreted as a lens: an optical instrument that magnifies what so often goes unseen. By the same token, it is a reservoir for the light source, highlighting the design from within with its warm, coppery glow,” offers Verbeke. “It evokes a flame on a wick, gently melting the paraffin and rendering a candle ever smaller, until it eventually disappears. Then, that same flame – licking the inside of the crafted glass and leaving its signature of soot – accentuates the copper structure of the piece on which the traces of time visibly linger. The reflection over the years ultimately incorporates transformations and fosters a pensive meditation on gradual finiteness.”
A foundational designer to the gallery’s collection, the Brussels-based Verbeke focuses on the emotional potential of design throughout her work – particularly with these pieces. Her creations offer spaces for introspection and contemplation, encouraging viewers to pause and reflect on the emotional complexity of their existence.
“Nel made the first contemporary design piece I collected called the Mirror Hourglass. I was immediately drawn to her work and her research-based practice,” says Scully. “By returning to the early industrial period and the Romantics' responses to industrially-made works, she confronts one of the most important questions for today: What does it mean to make collectible design in a world of industrial production? Drawing on this movement’s practices with objects to create new work is an interesting intellectual path to answer this question through history and the history of making.”
As a designer with whom Scully has worked previously, Verbeke’s show was a fitting choice to christen the gallery’s new “Viewing Room,” located upstairs from its previous home on East 79th Street. “With our new space, we are able to invite our clients and guests for an intimate and personal experience with our designers’ creations,” says Scully. “We have a number of installations planned for the year with a mix of contemporary creative voices and talents which will bring the space to life in ways I’m excited to share.”
“Mirror at Dusk” will be unveiled on Thursday, February 20, 2025 and will remain on view until March 29, 2025 by appointment.
About Nel Verbeke
Nel Verbeke is a conceptual designer and artist who lives and works in Brussels. Departing from an in-depth research, in which she looks back as well as ahead and critically reflects on the current zeitgeist, she arrives at situations and objects that both question and transform our relationship to ourselves and to what surrounds us.
She materialises her concepts with refined and timeless creations that should be understood as proto-instruments: thoughtful and delicate tools that provoke dedicated acts and, as such, represent proposals for future rituals. Her works remind us of the passage of time; create spaces for introspection and contemplation; and invite us to stand still and embrace the emotional ambivalence of our existence rather than to resist it.
Within her practice, Verbeke collaborates with other designers and slow crafters. She considers the processes of creation as moments where tradition and innovation meet and become part of meaningful designs, responding to the needs and urgencies of our contemporary (co-)existence.
Verbeke shows her work in collaboration with Dutch Invertuals, BRUT collective and as a participant of group exhibitions. Nel Verbeke studied Concept Design at the Design Academy in Eindhoven (NL), following an education in Fine Arts at Luca School of Arts in Ghent, Belgium.
About Emma Scully Gallery
Located in a 19th Century townhouse on the Upper East Side, Emma Scully Gallery presents thought-provoking, contemporary works that aim to answer the question of how design can gracefully move forward in today’s materia lsociety facing super abundance, the ecological cost of overproduction and the shift from the physical to the digital world. A balance of established greats, undiscovered talents, and collaborative commissions, the gallery’s conceptual programming is academically curated by EmmaScully, a creative professional well-versed in art history, design, and decorative art.
