Black is Beautiful Bench by Markus Friedrich Staab, 2019

Self-taught artist and designer Markus Friedrich Staab was born 1964 in Aschaffenburg, Germany. With a practice encompassing sculpture and painting, he opened his eponymous studio, Atelier Staab, in Aschaffenburg in 1986, later moving it to Frankfurt in 1996.

In 2010, Staab started experimenting with design. In this arena, he paints and transforms existing furniture (all found pieces, many of them chairs) into unique pieces, thereby adding new value and a sense of life to otherwise overlooked everyday or even historical objects. According to Staab, “Chairs that once were mass produced and homogenous become singular and unique… It is these themes—chairs as sculptural objects and art as object of utility—that I am particularly fascinated by.”

Staab’s work is included in a variety of private collections. Notable design projects include participation in the 2014 London Design Festival exhibition at 19 Greek Street in London; a series of furniture pieces for the Wahaca restaurant chain in London (2014 and 2012); and the commission of 50 chairs for a pop-up restaurant for the Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) in Frankfurt (2013).

German artist and designer Markus Friedrich Staab transforms the everyday, the forgotten and the normal into the extraordinary. Armed with a scalpel and a variety of brightly colored paints, Staab treats park benches, farmers' stools and industrial chairs in the same way that an artists treats her canvas. Staab's icon is the mass-produced chair. It is however reclaimed through his work: transformed from one piece of a homogenous set to an individual piece with a unique coat.

Working from his atelier in Frankfurt am Main, Staab's work is more demanding than it may seem. He lacquers his work at least twelve times, paints with pop colors and then applies a high-gloss varnish. Often the process will also include spray painting and sanding of surfaces. Staab aims to recapture ideas of utility in his work and the result of a striking and beautifully modified product. His maxim of 're-cycled, re-furbished, re-mixed and re-decorated' is the clearest expression of his ethos.

Staab is a self-taught artist and designer who began as a painter and sculptor. His work with objects found on the street or in second-hand stores, and particularly chairs, began in earnest in 2010. Since then he has transformed a variety of objects, most often with a history: a courtroom bench from Hamburg in the 60s, a pair of chairs from a German church given to him by a friend and even an architect‘s chair found in the streets of Frankfurt from the 1930s. As Staab continues to remix the regular, he becomes a symbol for sustainable artwork and equally for individual expression in all of its colorways.