Saatchi Yates is partnering with creative director and makeup artist Isamaya Ffrench to launch Studio Iron, a new design gallery whose inaugural exhibition opens April 30 and runs through June 7, 2026. The show presents a dense, post-industrial landscape dominated by steel and iron, featuring works by artists including Jannis Kounellis, Paul McCarthy, Jordan Wolfson, Anne Imhof, Marina Abramovic, Nico Vascellari, and others. Furniture, sculpture, installation, and painting collide in a space that resists categorization, hovering between function and non-function, utility and image.
The exhibition matters because it explicitly aims to dismantle the hierarchies between art, design, and object, staging their collision rather than presenting them as separate disciplines. By bringing together internationally recognized contemporary artists with design objects, Studio Iron proposes a shift in how we encounter objects today—not as fixed categories, but as fluid forms shaped by context, material, and meaning. The launch also marks Ffrench's expansion from beauty and fashion into the art and design world, signaling a growing convergence of creative industries.