Gustavo Barroso Designs To Bring People Together

Gustavo Barroso’s Designs To Bring People Together. Barroso talked to WOE about the purpose of his products, working with Kidsuper, creating NFTs, and his latest project Open Studios.

“Every artist is a brand by nature, right?,” Gustavo Barroso asked declaratively. “The signature–our signatures–is our logo in a way.”

Much like brands, furniture has its own personalities. Barroso’s furniture is a whimsical escape from the monotony of everyday life. With products like his infamous Slime Chairs or his Caution Tape Table, which juxtaposes the idea that caution tape is meant to separate and tables are meant to connect, he aims to highlight the ridiculousness of life and bring people together. 

“I like to examine the ridiculousness of life,'' he said. “The blue slime chair was a perfectly functional chair before I turned it on its side and built another thing on top of it. Putting the chair on the side is funny to me because we're always trying to crack the code of how to live life and how to do life. And life could be so simple.”

Barroso is largely inspired by Wendell Castle’s philosophies on sculpture and story as well as Daniel Arsham’s ability to build an entire world with his specific visual language. His objective is to tell a layered story with products that feel incredibly niche, stylistically cool and playfully futuristic.

“The main things I really like about Castle are just his form and stories,” he said. “He has really good videos on YouTube where he discusses that when he's making his pieces, he's not thinking about how much it weighs or being able to get it through like a single frame doorway and stuff. The Mickey chair is based on one of Castle's chairs.” 

In a talk at the School of Visual Arts, Barroso said that he thinks that Castle would like his recontextualization of the Long Night chair. This recontextualization roots back to Barroso’s initial introduction to design through streetwear brands like The Hundreds and LRG– whose amount of referential work feels infinite.

“I first learned about design as a field when I was in high school finding brands like The Hundreds and Lifted Research Group,” he said. “I joined a graphic design and printing class in my high school and would literally print t-shirts, throw them on my shoulder and just walk around selling them in the hallway literally for like $5 or $10.”

When choosing his major, Barroso couldn’t decide between fashion, architecture, or graphic design. Then, he learned about–and chose–industrial design, which was a combination of all those disciplines. 

Barroso credits one of his favorite professors and mentors, Taylor Davis, for making him believe that he could make it in art; making objects, not just making products. She quickly saw his potential and asked him to assist in her studio – something she’s never asked of a freshman. Surrounded by resources that he never had growing up, he started making furniture and sculptures. 

“When I started making furniture and sculptures, I realized that I was living in an interesting intersection of being in a wood shop, but also being a fan of hip hop and what we call streetwear. I realized I was engulfed in a niche that many people weren’t interested in. So, I started reaching out to fashion brands through dms and asking to collaborate on furniture.” 

The first brand to respond was KidSuper, a fashion brand offering a child-like sense of wonder that’s been worn by Keenan Thompson, Angus Cloud, and Dua Lipa. Barroso DM’d him saying “yo, let's make furniture” and Colm Dillane, Kidsuper founder, responded “yo, I need furniture. When can you come to New York?”

Barroso was in Boston at the time, so he hopped on a bus and went to New York City that weekend. Now, they’ve been working together for 5 years. Most recently, Barroso fabricated a surrealistic trunk that looks like windows on the side, which you can see right through.

“Colm will randomly throw me some wild ideas and say, ‘I need this done in a week’, Barroso said. “I sourced the trunk online and bought it from some random site. I cut a hole in it and designed and 3D printed the window. We just brought it to Paris in our luggage. It got all damaged and shit, so I had to remake it.” 

Finishing projects like the Kidsuper trunk and doing art shows are bittersweet for Barroso. After something is complete, the question immediately becomes “what’s next?”

“You work so hard on something and then it just sucks or it doesn't look the way you would want it to look or people don't respond to it or it doesn't sell as well or as fast as you wish it would,” he says.“And even if your work sells, you know, you're like, okay, cool. ‘What next?’ Then, I start getting down on myself, but I'm trying to be better about just enjoying the entire process and being grateful for, you know, being able to go through the whole process.”

Barroso’s world is expanding. In fashion, he’s also worked on an orange slime table for Heron Preston, is in conversation to work with Reese Cooper, and has a collaboration with Carrots that is slated to release next year. He’s continuing to “bring his little world into other peoples worlds” by sharing his ideas with people that can’t afford a $5,000 chair with things like t-shirts, furniture-based toys, and NFTs.

From a very young age, Barroso understood the idea that digital experiences, objects and products have value despite being unable to hold it in the real world. The perpetual royalties and being able to create in the digital world is what intrigues him about the future. He launched a collection and it gained traction, enough for him to quit his job and focus on his work.

“I still have a collection that I'm working on because the NFT technology is not going away, '' he said. “I think it's something that is extremely powerful. It's not about how many millions of dollars these pixelated pictures you're selling for. It's about pushing the technology forward to empower artists and decentralization and democratizing the art world.”

His latest project is Open Studios, an open-source, inexpensive way to present products–some cost while others are free–that Barroso is working on. The project is broken down into three areas of resources: creative business, art and design, and fabrication, specifically focusing on digital fabrication, 3D printing and woodworking.

“Open Studio is a new venture that will be an online store where I'm gonna sell the billboard chair, but it's also gonna be an asset library. All of the designs that we sell, like the billboard chair, will also be available to download for free, so if you have a jigsaw and you want to make this chair, you can just download the file for free and just make it yourself. The reason why I did that is because I want to be able to bring people together around the idea of making things and having fun making things.” 

While Barroso has used the internet to garner success, he’s also seen the difficulties of garnering attention with the current pace of consumption.

“The internet allows you to bring people together,” he says. “It's hard to break through the noise sometimes with the sheer amount of volume being put out every single day.  Still, I believe there's never been an easier time to become a professional creative in any medium. No matter where you are in the world, even in a poor neighborhood in Brazil, if you can draw and have access to the internet you can share your work with the world and at some point, somebody's gonna notice you.”

Barroso says he’s living the American Dream. A child of immigrant parents from a village with approximately 10,000 people, he now has a studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He’s among his contemporaries as well as legendary designers that are interacting and helping each other problem-solve. 

He credits his hard work to his parents, and in turn, he plans to retire his parents from his hard work.

“Making money from art is not easy. Retiring your parents from art is damn near impossible. My parents work their asses off. Retiring them is only gonna happen if I work my ass off. So in my head, if I work as hard as my parents do, there's just no way this thing doesn't work out.”