Frieze London 2025: Seven Furniture Pieces That Blur Art and Design

By Marcus Bennett

Frieze London runs until 18 October, and this year the contemporary art fair carries an unusual freight: chairs. Design galleries now show paintings and art fairs now exhibit seating, as designers increasingly identify as artists and produce one-off furniture that functions as collectible work.

The phenomenon is not new. 'Art furniture' emerged in the 19th century with the Aesthetic and Arts and Crafts movements, and seating in particular has long served artists as a sculptural medium — a format that engages directly with the human body. Wallpaper* surveyed the booths in Regent's Park and selected seven pieces. Here is what practitioners should register from each.

What did the selectors find?

'Bosa Bosa Chair 11' (2026) by Rio Kobayashi — shown with Kate MacGarry. The London-based designer repaired an antique oak swivel chair and tied miniature black and white brushes to it with blue and red thread — part mohawk, part crazed broom. 'Bosa bosa' means 'messy hair' in Japanese. Kobayashi also stripped the dark varnish, revealed the raw oak and punched two holes in the backrest.

'I liked the idea of repairing and transforming an old chair while adding something like hair to it,' Kobayashi told Wallpaper*. 'Messy hair creates a particular sense of attachment – it can make you want to take care of someone or something.'

'afterimage of beginning 026-642' (2026) by Choi Byung Hoon — presented by Busan-based Johyun Gallery. The ash wood and natural stone cabinet reads as a stack of sleek black boxes balanced against rough organic stone. The gallery describes Choi's work as merging the 'practical object-ness of furniture' with the 'sophisticated aesthetics of art and a craftsman's dexterity'. Seoul-based Choi has carved out a central position in Korea's art furniture market.

'Bent Around With Love Handles' (2009) by Martino Gamper and Francis Upritchard — at Turin's Galleria Franco Noero. Gamper designed the chair with his wife, the sculptor Upritchard, for a 2009 exhibition. A four-legged metal base carries a curved plywood patchwork seat, with bright green modelling clay sculpted into bulbous handles.

'Survival: Protect me…' (2018) by Jenny Holzer — presented by Kukje Gallery. The American artist engraved the words 'protect me from what I want' onto a bench of dark labradorite stone, continuing her use of text as political and social commentary.

'Panca verde' (2026) by Giuseppe Ducrot — on show with Galleria Lorcan O'Neill. The Italian sculptor's glazed ceramic bench draws on classical and Baroque sources with a loose contemporary hand. Ducrot regularly makes pieces for churches and cultural institutions across Europe, including Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome.

'Carbonated Express' (2026) by Steph Huang — part of a special presentation from London's Public Gallery. The London-based Taiwanese artist built the steel and aluminium bar cart on wheels, with a wooden handle carved to look like a baguette, to interrogate mass production and commerce in the food industry. The presentation also includes a wall light made from a Perelló olive can.

'Day Tracker' (2025) by Anna Gonzalez Noguchi — presented by Shanghai-based Gallery Vacancy. Each golden, powder-coated steel stool has a Japanese kanji character cut into its seat, corresponding to the days of the week and to natural phenomena. The Japanese-Spanish artist dedicates the work to her grandmother, who lives with dementia and regularly records the date and weather. Shown in a circle at Frieze, the stools can connect or disperse — a formal echo of the confusion dementia produces. The work appeared outdoors at the Liverpool Biennial last year.

Why does this matter for designers?

The fair confirms the direction: one-off furniture now travels through art-market channels, priced and promoted as sculpture rather than product. For studios weighing limited editions against production lines, Frieze's booths — until 18 October — are the clearest signal yet of where collectible design buyers are looking.