When he moved in at the beginning of the year, Harry Nuriev’s first gesture was to place on the herringbone parquet floor of his new Paris apartment two of his most recent creations: a royal blue sofa and a faux humanoid grass green fur. A way to pursue a dialogue between history and its contemporary universe at home.
The designer and artist, who grew up in Russia before spending a few years in the United States, chose the Beaux-Arts district to settle with his companion and partner, Tyler Billinger. Very proud to see, from his window, the mansion where Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé lived for a time (shareholder of the Le Monde Group from 2010 to his death in 2017) at the back of the courtyard…
Immersed in pop culture
Child of the century, Harry Nuriev likes to consider waste as a raw material. He cuts flowers out of recycled paper to make decorations and reupholsters sofas with old Balenciaga designer clothes. Trained at the Beaux-Arts then at the Institute of Architecture in Moscow, he cites Le Corbusier among his masters. Another major influence of his work: Russian constructivism.
Immersed in pop culture, Harry Nuriev, who grew up in Stavropol, near the Georgian border, is a specialist in the splits. Among his references is the English film bean, a scene of which inspired his latest installation, a room lined with sheets of books that featured prominently in the exhibition “Just a Space”, organized in Paris in January by Sarah Andelman, co-founder of the concept store Colette, now closed.
In 2014, Harry Nuriev founded an architecture and design studio in Moscow called Crosby Studios: “I chose this name because the first time I thought of becoming independent, I was walking down Crosby Street in New York. And then the term “cross” evokes for me the meeting point of several universes, the very basis of my work. » It was also in New York that he exhibited his very first collection of furniture and ended up setting up his offices.
A desire to “dress the interiors”
The coronation arrives in 2018, with the presentation at Art Basel Miami of The Office, in which sits a desk chair with wheels upholstered in white lace and the Balenciaga logo. A gesture that is part of the will “to dress the interiors” and which allows him to multiply collaborations with the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas as well as with Nike. Author of furniture that is often experimental or produced in limited series and of unreal places, such as the Pink Mamma restaurant in Moscow, Harry Nuriev mixes a vision that is both arty and pragmatic in his decorations.
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