Private Dining
The semi-private dining room at Manuela showcases an ebulliently decorated seven meter long, oval shaped 24-seat dining table and brilliant red custom rug designed by acclaimed American artist Rashid Johnson set against a wall-drawing by Pat Steir. Reached via a dedicated entrance on Prince St. or through the restaurant, private dining at Manuela is an experience like no other.
‘Broken Men Table’ (2024) has been created specifically for Manuela and is Johnson’s first table, With a mosaic surface comprised of handmade artisanal and industrial tiles, spray paint and smashed mirrors, ‘Broken Men Table’s collage-like composition, cracked colors and abstracted faces recall Johnson’s ‘Anxious Men’ and ‘Broken Men’ series, in which the human figure is pushed to breaking point. Within these bustling compositions, rudimentary renderings of the human face are brought to the fore, their wild and agitated expressions speaking to both individual and collective identities against shifting social realities. Of these earlier works, Johnson has said, “I’m trying to illustrate tons of different people and at the same time they’re probably all me”.
The rug has been created in close partnership with Tessere, a bespoke carpet design firm based in the UK. Designed in an oval shape to mirror the structure of Manuela’s private dining room, the rug borrows its striking visuals from Johnson’s ‘God Painting “A New Day”’ (2023), an abstract and almost geometric work that takes liminality and rebirth as its subjects. Depicting a series of almond shapes impressed in white into deep crimson, the image plays with the intersection of overlapping circles and solidifies the liminal spaces that are conjured between. Also recalling eyes turned on their sides, the motif provides a nod to the reverence Johnson holds for things he cannot explain but feels inside and is a powerful new addition to his visual lexicon. On the painting, Johnson says, “I happened to be outside one day laying with my family. I closed my eyes and I was looking up at the sun. It was a warm day. I saw this red behind my eyes and I said to myself, this is incredibly simple: I’m going to call that thing God.”
Since the 1970s, Pat Steir has created more than 50 wall drawings in museums, galleries, cultural institutions, and residences around the world. Specially commissioned for Manuela, ‘Song’ (2024) is Steir’s most recent site-specific wall drawing. Made with aquacryl paint, colored pencil, and matte varnish applied directly to the wall, ‘Song’ spans 3m x 7.5m in Manuela’s private dining room. Composed of green, carmine, mauve, and raspberry pink brushstrokes that curve, arc, and swerve across a light-yellow background, the energetic marks punctuate a hand-drawn grid, evoking notes in a musical score. “I imagine how the rhythm of the brushstrokes may move in conjunction with the people moving through the space,” Steir says. The streams of paint recall the artist’s now iconic ‘Waterfall’ paintings, which she began in the late 1980s in a studio located on Wooster Street just a few blocks away from Manuela. Steir took into consideration the location and atmosphere when she made ‘Song’. She says, “It is a serious work of art, but it’s also decoration. I did this musical piece because it would be nice to eat your food and look at.”
Between the open-plan restaurant and private dining space, guests will find ‘New – Tide’ (2024), a site-specific artwork and functional object, specially commissioned for Manuela, New York by Duro Olowu, an acclaimed British-Nigerian fashion designer and curator. Both a curtain and a room divider, it is composed of a combination of fabrics assiduously stitched together. Textiles designed by Duro are paired with antique fabrics he has collected over a number of years. Vintage trimmings are interspersed throughout the horizontal and vertical paneling as “intentional intrusions”, which, in Duro’s words are designed to prompt “the reimagining and redefining [of] walls and spaces”. These intuitive and color-drenched abstract compositions are rendered in repetition, whilst the elements of craft, making and assemblage are in keeping with the rest of Duro’s artistic practice.
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