(New York, NY– Jan 2026) Galerie56 is proud to announce an exciting collaboration with London’s pioneering gallery Themes & Variations for itsfifteenth selling exhibition. Having opened on November 7, All The World’s A Stage offers a fresh perspective on avant-garde modern and contemporary design, featuring early works by Tom Dixon and André Dubreuil alongside new sculptural artworks by Benedetta Mori Ubaldini and Anna Barlow among others.
The exhibition marks the first collaboration between the two galleries and its founders, Lee F. Mindel, FAIA, and Liliane Fawcett, who have a shared reverence for the decorative arts in all of its forms and the ongoing dialogue between historic and contemporary design. With All The World’s A Stage,the importance of avant-garde sensibilities is brought to the foreground while highlighting its impact and enduring influence on designers and artists to this day.
“My respect and admiration for Liliane began some 40 years ago when we met at the opening of her trailblazing London gallery, which became the center of innovative design through her championing of burgeoning talents and eccentric aesthetics that are now firmly situated in the canon of international design,” notes Lee F. Mindel, FAIA, founder of Galerie56. “It’s an honor to be collaborating with her in this way for the first time.”
The works selected for All the World’s A Stage span time periods and countries of origin but all share a visual language defined by the experimental and theatrical nature of the avant-garde style. There are a significant number of pieces from the Creative Salvage movement, which was founded by Tom Dixon, Nick Jones, Mark Brazier-Jones, and the late André Dubreuil the same year that Fawcett first set up her London-based gallery. As an early patron of Tom Dixon and the first gallery to exhibit his work, Themes & Variations brings notable metal works spanning his entire career from Fish Pan Chair (one of his earliest works, crafted from found scrap metal) and Pylon Chair(originally made in Dixon’s metal workshop in the early 1990s and designed to be the world’s lightest metal chair) to more recent masks made from welded salvage metal.
The exhibition also features early works by André Dubreil including Desk and Chair,which was first exhibited at Themes & Variations in his first solo exhibition in 1986; the impressive and rare Messanger Console by Mark Brazier-Jones; themonumental Neptune wall sculpture by Anthony Redmile; sculptural jewelry by Eileen Coyne; hyper-realistic ceramic sculptures by Anna Barlow; and large-scale wire sculptures by Benedetta Mori Ubaldini.
“Expression over Function – I believe that each piece in this exhibition exudes emotion,” states Liliane Fawcett, owner of Themes & Variations. “The story they tell through their unconventional visual tension carries a theatrical sensitivity: a desk, a chair, a mirror stages you in a performance where its form is the drama. In that sense they open the door to a more holistic approach to design.”
All the World’s A Stage features the work of Tom Dixon, André Dubreuil, Mark Brazier-Jones, Eileen Coyne, Anna Barlow, Deborah Thomas, Piero Fornasetti, Tony Duquette, Danny Lane, Jenny Martin, Anthony Redmile, and Benedetta Mori Ubaldini. The exhibition is on view from November 7 – January 8, 2025 at Galerie56 located at 240 Church Street, New York, NY.
