'50 chairs at christie's' traces how designers keep reinventing the act of sitting

50 chairs arrive at christie's beverly hills Christie's Beverly Hills will fill with chairs later this month, though very few of them resemble the kind you would casually pull up to a table. Basic.Space has assembled 50 pieces for 50 Chairs at Christie's, bringing together familiar names from 20th-century design with contemporary furniture that stretches the category into stranger territory. The exhibition opens by appointment from September 25th through 30th, and every chair will be available to buy. The range becomes pretty clear from the first few works announced. Charles and Ray Eames' LCW appears in a rare calfskin edition produced in 2002 for a Christie's auction, contributed here by the Eames Foundation. A hammered-brass chair by Philippe Hiquily, made in the 1970s and coming from Kelly Wearstler's collection, sits much closer to sculpture. Then there is Joe Colombo's Elda Chair from 1963, with its huge molded-fiberglass shell wrapping around the body like a pod. Vince Skelly for Basic.Space, 50 Chairs at Christie's from plywood to moose antler Rick Owens takes the chair in a much heavier direction. His Stag Stool is made from black plywood with a natural moose antler rising from one side, an object that feels almost architectural in its bluntness. Sam Klemick's Trumpet Dining Chair has a completely different energy. Its wooden legs widen toward the floor and the backrest seems to sag and bunch as if the timber had somehow softened under its own weight. SeungJin Yang's Lounge Chair 01 – Transparent Blue is probably the quickest piece to understand from a photograph. The chair begins with balloons, which Yang coats and fixes in resin until their temporary, inflated shapes become solid furniture. In transparent blue, the whole thing looks swollen and a little cartoonish, with every armrest and cushion still carrying the rounded pressure of air inside it. The Future Perfect is contributing the piece to the exhibition. Trumpet Dining Chair by Sam Klemick, for Basic.Space, 50 Chairs at Christie's the owners are part of the story The selection also says something about how these pieces circulate. Some arrive through galleries, while others come directly from people who have lived with or collected them. Eric Wareheim contributes the Elda Chair, Kelly Wearstler sends the Hiquily piece, and collectors Giampiero Tagliaferri and Adrien Dewulf contribute the CL9 ribbon chair. Basic.Space is building the exhibition through its own network, so the room will reflect personal collecting habits alongside the usual design-history names. Jesse Lee, founder and CEO of Basic.Space, describes discovery as central to the company's approach: 'Discovery has always been at the heart of Basic.Space and our ecosystem of designers, artists and creatives.' The Christie's takeover follows other physical events organized by the platform and comes after its acquisitions of Design Miami and Platform, which gives Basic.Space a growing presence across both the collectible design market and the events built around it. Joseph Santiago-Dieppa, Autobody Autobody for Basic.Space, 50 Chairs at Christie's a very familiar object gets weird Chairs make an unusually good subject for this kind of exhibition because everyone already knows the basic assignment. A seat needs somewhere for the body to land and some way of holding it off the floor. Beyond that, designers have spent decades seeing how far they can push the object. In this group alone, plywood becomes a sculptural block, balloons become resin, and molded fiberglass grows into a shell large enough to surround its sitter. Putting all 50 together should make those differences immediate. A 1940s Eames design can sit a few steps from a contemporary chair whose form began as an inflated balloon, with the distance between them visible before anyone reads a label. Christie's Beverly Hills gives that comparison a suitably formal setting, though the premise itself is pleasantly simple: one room, one furniture type, and 50 very different answers. Lounge Chair 01 – Transparent Blue by SeungJin Yang, The Future Perfect for Basic.Space, 50 Chairs at Christie's NH DePass, Autobody Autobody for Basic.Space, 50 Chairs at Christie's View this post on Instagram A post shared by Basic.Space (@basic.space) 1/4 Teamwork Chair by PlayLab, Inc. for Basic.Space 50 Chairs at Christie's Stag Stool by Rick Owens, Carpenter's Workshop Gallery for Basic.Space 50 Chairs at Christie's O Stool, Estudio Persona for Basic.Space 50 Chairs at Christie's Popo Soft by Willett, for Basic.Space 50 Chairs at Christie's project info: name: 50 Chairs at Christie's curator: Basic.Space | @basic.space venue: Christie's Beverly Hills | @christiesinc location: 336 North Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, California 90210 public dates: September 25th — 30th, 2026 (by appointment)