Just Dreamy

It’s surprising that Faye Toogood has not yet explicitly called upon the realm of the subconscious in her designs, given the sensual curves and spontaneous, meandering lines that grace much of her recent work. For two new projects, the London-based designer has at last deliberately tapped into her own Freudian inclinations with pieces that capture figments of her psyche. This week, the fruits of her efforts debut in New York in two simultaneous presentations at TIWA Gallery and The Future Perfect, collectively dubbed “Lucid Dream.”

‍

Through spirited, expressionistic lines and color, these collections further culminate a broader arc in her practice, traveling away from cold remove and toward subjectivity and passion. “When I started in design, I worked very much in industrial materials, took away decoration and color, focused on form and geometry and function,” she says. “Post-pandemic, I have unleashed more of myself—what is there, what was there to begin with.” The works also mark a turning point in her practice, says Toogood: “Both projects have me picking up the paint brush. This is very personal, it’s very much my touch on these pieces.”

At TIWA, Toogood reveals a series of paper floor- and ceiling-lamps that fold out accordion-style over iron framework. The beige shades are emblazoned with wispy, dark-brown line drawings of nude figures and natural topography, like rivers and trees. The lamp series ended up titled after what began as a teasing nickname—“Johnny,” British slang for condoms—inspired by the maneuver required to set them up. (“They come flat, you pull them up, you unwrap them, you have to pull them over the frame,” she elaborates.) That’s fitting enough, given that Toogood envisions these as being for nighttime use while evoking eroticism of the unconscious mind. “It’s kind of going into a dream-like state to access a different part of your brain in order to create something new,” she says. The illustrations pull from an expansive dream-scape drawing—with those same nudes as well as disembodied appendages sprawled amidst a coniferous landscape—which is also on view.

‍

In contrast, the pieces at The Future Perfect plunge viewers into a psychedelic vortex of swirling abstractions, articulated through billowing contours and jagged swathes of bright color. Bubble-gum pink, marigold, brown, deep blue, red, turquoise, and more make up the surface patterns on one-of-a-kind armchairs, screens, a dining table and matching seating, as well as a hanging mobile (that latter form is a first for her studio). The results, she asserts, are as much a reflection of her own creative impulses as they are her “emotional intelligence.” The designer is “embracing what it is to be human, and to have a human touch, a human impact, a human gesture.”

For Toogood, both series also rebuff the looming specter of A.I. on the design-world’s horizon—instead asserting, as she puts it, an act of optimism. “It’s going to be so easy to generate new forms, but they will all be derivative in some way,” she says of the technology's creative capacity. “That’s not to say all design does not have some element of derivative or inspiration. But I feel like celebrating what it means to be human and what makes us not a machine.”

‍

‍“Lucid Dream” is on view until June 21, 2025, at TIWA Gallery  at 86 Walker Street, New York, New York 10013 and until June 16, 2025, at The Future Perfect at 8 St Lukes Place, New York, New York, 10014.