‘The Secret in Their Eyes’

Cadogan Gallery was founded in 1980 in a small building in South Kensington, London, what used to be Christopher’s home. In 2023, the gallery opened a second space in Milan, aiming to gain a new international perspective on its exhibition programme. With an artist-focused approach and a strong aesthetic identity, Cadogan highlights the work of artists who have grown alongside the gallery since its founding, as well as a new generation of emerging voices. 

It was only fitting that during this year’s Milan Design Week, Cadogan Gallery was the chosen setting celebrating a special event for the launch of Openhouse Magazine’s new issue, with the support of Mango Home. Under the creative direction of Openhouse, Cadogan Gallery hosted the artistic installation “The Secret in Their Eyes”, the title of the magazine’s latest edition.

The exhibition unfolded as an invitation to explore a unique visual narrative, one where the unnoticed took center stage and fleeting moments transformed into lasting stories. Together with a carefully curated selection of Mango Home pieces, serving as the central axis of the narrative, the exhibition featured works by renowned designers and artists invited by Openhouse, including Astep, Jorge Suárez-Kilzi, Tom Fereday, Apohli, Edoardo Avelino, Obstacles, Cédric Etienne, Kawabi, Jorg Koziol, Stoff Nagel, Linie Design and Kristhel Jimenez.

Additionally, the scenic proposal engaged in a creative dialogue with the works of Sam Lock’s “Stanza”, the ongoing exhibition at Cadogan Gallery. This being the British painter’s third exhibition at Cadogan Gallery, “Stanza” refers to both a group of lines of poetry that form a unit or a related group of lines within a poem. This idea is translated visually into Sam’s new paintings on a raw canvas and on paper and board. 

“Stanza” is formed in two parts. Five large paintings form the larger works in the exhibition; these have been cut from a roll of raw canvas, each one a moment, an encapsulation of a state of flow. The narrative line is broken into 5 moments, all separate but still part of the whole act. The paintings work together and talk across their separate boundaries—they are at once together and apart.

In this way, all the diverse but harmonious works that comprised the installation “The Secret in Their Eyes” were embraced by Sam Lock’s painting, creating a beautiful interplay where textures, shapes and scales interacted with each other. The result is an atmosphere where each scene unveiled an untold story. Detail, design, and dialogue formed the pillars of an event where art and design converged as one.