Extainer — Objects as Open Structures
Anton Edelshtein is a Tel Aviv–based designer and researcher working between object design and immersive spatial experience. His practice approaches objects as open structures—where form, material, and context generate shifting relations, potentials, and modes of presence.
Gallery
Extainers are objects conceived as open structures rather than closed forms. They do not stabilize function, but displace it—allowing relations, gestures, and intensities to emerge through form, material, and context. Each series explores a different condition of openness, moving from suspension and absence to compression, excess, and transformation.
Concept
Extainer is a way of thinking and working with objects as open structures rather than closed forms. Instead of treating design objects as containers of predefined ideas, functions, or meanings, this approach understands objecthood as something that emerges through relations—between form and material, body and space, use and perception.
In contemporary design, objects often disappear into efficiency. Their functions become transparent, their presence neutral, their material and atmospheric qualities subdued. Extainer responds to this condition by shifting attention away from central functions and toward peripheral forces: gestures, tensions, traces, and latent potentials that usually remain unnoticed.
An extainer does not negate function, but displaces it. Function recedes from the centre, allowing other modes of engagement to surface—corporeal, intuitive, affective, and cultural. Objects are no longer read as stable instruments, but as dynamic fields shaped by weak relations, shifting intensities, and contextual conditions.
This perspective is informed by a rhizomatic logic, in which objects do not unfold along linear or hierarchical structures. Instead, they operate through distributed connections, partial presences, and moments of withdrawal. An object never fully coincides with its appearance or use; it exceeds them. Its identity remains open, contingent, and continuously reconfigured through interaction.
Within this framework, familiar typologies—such as the hanger, the stool, or the candleholder—are approached as sites of transformation. By deconstructing their archetypal logics and inhabiting their negative or peripheral spaces, new topologies emerge. These objects no longer seek to explain themselves or resolve into clarity. They invite attention, hesitation, and interpretation.
Extainer does not propose a style or a category. It functions as an ontological position and a working method—one that treats objects as situations rather than solutions. Through openness, ambiguity, and relational tension, the object becomes a medium of experience: not something to be consumed, but something that asks to be encountered.
About
Anton Edelshtein is a designer and researcher working with objects as open structures. His practice moves between object design, spatial situations, and philosophical inquiry, focusing on how form, material, and context generate relations rather than fixed meanings.
He approaches design as a mode of thinking through matter. Familiar typologies are not treated as problems to be solved, but as sites to be opened—where gestures, tensions, traces, and peripheral conditions become active. Objects are understood not as neutral instruments, but as situations that shape perception, posture, attention, and presence.
Alongside his research-driven practice, Edelshtein previously founded OMTURA, a label of sculptural leather objects that explored materiality, craft, and form through a conceptual lens. The brand was presented internationally, including a solo exhibition at Periscope Gallery (Tel Aviv) and presentations at Paris Fashion Week.
This trajectory—moving between design and theory—forms the basis of his current work. Rather than separating practice and reflection, Edelshtein treats objects as mediums of experience: structures that resist closure and invite encounter, interpretation, and sustained attention.
Contact
Get in touch for exhibitions, collaborations or enquiries.
Email
edelsanton@gmail.com
Instagram
@antonedels
Brand
Omtura