C. S. Valentin –; War Won’t Work
Somewhere between a teenage bedroom and a woodland shrine, War Won’t Work brings together furniture, rugs, ceramics, and lights that suggest a world that never quite existed — or perhaps did, for a fleeting season, in the minds of a certain kind of English utopians.
The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift was one such dream. Founded in 1920s Britain by artist and mystic John Hargrave, they envisioned peace not just as a treaty or slogan, but as a new kind of human: self-reliant, symbol-literate, deeply entangled with nature. They carved, marched, embroidered, and invoked. They believed design could be a form of moral engineering — pattern as pedagogy, craft as covenant.
This exhibition is not a re-creation. It’s a private mythology, loosely linked. The works draw on that utopian lineage but speak their own language — through oak, stone, ceramic, thread, and flat-weave wool. Most of the larger pieces were produced by ATRA’s renowned Mexico City atelier, while others were made in collaboration with regional artisans: rugs woven in Oaxaca, stones sourced from the mountains of Tepoztlán, and embroidery stitched by hand or machine by designers and badge-makers alike. The ceramics were shaped and glazed by Valentin and his studio over the course of the past year.
UV-printed imagery — garden diagrams, forest snapshots, fragments of type — appears across oak panels, sometimes flickering across cabinet doors or surfacing unexpectedly beneath a chair seat. A mirror is framed with ceramic leaves that reference one’s gathered at local parks. A sling chair with a steel frame and rug seats has the words World Peace and Brotherhood woven into the body of the textiles.
Everywhere, wilderness seeps in. Ceramics swarm with insects and vines, branches, and snakes. There are stools made of logs, and tent-like silhouettes that lean toward the imaginary. Each piece stands firmly on its own — yet together, they speak like a troupe, loosely threaded by a shared language of craft and belief.
Now the room speaks quietly. Craft instead of conquest. Tents that don’t collapse. Objects that hold both use and longing. A cabinet with a view. A table that remembers. An insect glazed in green.
The faint idea that if we remake the objects, the objects might remake us.
A peaceable kingdom assembled in resistance — not protest, not purity — but the quiet, whimsical determination to keep dreaming in the face of it all.
To place beauty, nature, and imagination in proximity — and call that, for lack of a better word, peace.
ABOUT C.S. VALENTINC.S. Valentin (French, b. 1979) graduated summa cum laude from the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he studied under Annette Messager and Sophie Calle. He began his career as Art Director for jewelry designer Marie-Hélène de Taillac in Paris and Tokyo, collaborating with Tom Dixon, Marc Newson, and Jean-Philippe Delhomme. His trajectory led him to London, where he directed the global visual department of the fashion brand Joseph, and later to New York, where he oversaw visual merchandising for Miu Miu North America before joining Olivier Theyskens at Theory as Global Director of Visual Merchandising.
In 2014, Valentin was commissioned to rebrand and redesign Hotel Esencia on the Mayan Riviera, a project that cemented his reputation in hospitality design and was widely featured in Wallpaper Magazine, Forbes, and Condé Nast Traveller. He went on to lead design and creative direction for the Chaya Restaurant Group in California and, in parallel, co-founded Bogus Studio, a furniture and home goods brand with a showroom on Lafayette Street in New York. His practice expanded into residential interiors and concept retail, including the launch of Bellport General in Bellport, NY, which he founded and directed for two years.
Since relocating to Mexico City in 2019, Valentin has continued to design for hospitality projects in Belize, Florida, and Baja California, working closely with local artisans and fabricators. He is the founder of Tuberosa, a project space dedicated to outdoor design and ceramics, and serves as a creative consultant for the luxury furniture brand ATRA, where his role spans branding and the development of a home goods collection. In 2024, he launched Wunderkammer, a clothing brand with a fetish for high art. In 2025, he’s presenting his first solo design show under his name at Ago Projects in Mexico City.
