Atelier Courbet (175-177 Mott Street) has enlisted gallerist Helen Drutt to curate a solo exhibition of pieces by world-renowned Dutch designer Gijs Bakker, known as The Holes Project: A Dialogue Between Design and Craftsmanship. The exhibition will open in conjunction with the NYCXDesign celebration on May 14 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., and will be on view until June 15.

"Bench with Holes," constructed of stained maple wood, will be unveiled on May 14.

Bakker is a former Eindhoven professor and co-founder of Droog Design. Introduced to the U.S. design world by Helen Drutt 40 years ago at her eponymous Philadelphia gallery, this is the designer’s first solo exhibition in the U.S. in almost a decade.

Gijs Bakker's "Room Divider," is a new addition to The Holes Collection.

The Holes Collection began as a project commissioned for the Product of Imagination (POI) Foundation’s “Chair Sweet Chair” exhibition in 1989. This exhibition required selected designers and artists to revisit an existing chair design. Beginning with an unvarnished maplewood chair on four straight legs, Bakker applied “holes,” which not only visually lightened the piece of furniture but also reduced the weight of the chair by almost a third. The regularity of the holes is a perfect example of form following function: the larger the piece and the more holes added, the smaller the holes must be. Following this commissioned piece, Bakker designed a range of pieces embodying this concept.

"Bracelet with Holes" and "Chair with Holes" are testaments to the collection's diversity.

The exhibition at Atelier Courbet will unveil three new pieces as part of The Holes Project. These will include a new iteration of the closed-edition Holes console table and the Holes room divider. All pieces are manufactured at the designer’s collaborators’ workshops in the Netherlands.

Droog Design co-founder and "Holes" designer Gijs Bakker