Postcard from Paris Design Week 2024

Because the itinerant decadence of one other European summer season wanes and the French reluctantly return to work for the optimistic annual reset they name la rentrée, Paris Design Week 2024 (5 – 14 September)unfolded within the metropolis of sunshine amidst the ultimate days of the 2024 Olympic (and Paralympic) fervour. With the megalith commerce present Maison & Objet returning to its biannual outpost at Parc de la Villette exterior the town, a smattering of native launches and satellite tv for pc occasions on the town framed a mushy touchdown into the brand new working yr for the Paris design group.

Each industry-facing appointments and public exhibitions provided a glimpse into the eclectic prospects of latest craft, historic re-editions and graphic opulence that type part of at the moment’s design panorama. However with the European spring so saturated with design occasions from March to July, one couldn’t assist really feel an absence of heavyweight funding and spectacle-driven occasions this week, with some design editors selecting to relocate tasks already introduced throughout Salone del Cell 2024 in April, and others activating their showrooms and everlasting areas with smaller collectible design showcases and collaborations.

Paris Design Week 2024

To wit, we noticed Tacchini’s Faye Toogood idea ‘Impolite Arts Membership’ compacted into Silvera’s Left Financial institution showroom, CC-Tapis’ ‘Criss Cross’ assortment by India Mahdavi re-hung within the designer’s personal Venture Room on the rue de Bellechasse, and Pierre Chapo’s graphic recycled fur-niture idea on present at furrier Yves Salomon’s 1st arrondissement HQ. Initially unveiled in Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse social housing in Marseille, a formidable set of multi-coloured glass salon furnishings by French duo Marie + Alexandre migrated north to Galerie Signé, a block away from French ceramicist Elsa Foulon’s new assortment of milky glazed column lamps completed with Schumacher’s sky-tinted ombré textiles within the model’s Rue Jacob workplace.

Beginning the week on the again of the Centre Pompidou’s newly opened ‘Surréalisme’ centenary exhibition earlier than the museum’s impending five-year renovation, BD Barcelona and NES Gallery joined forces at Galerie Poggi with a hybrid present of Surrealist-inspired design items from the likes of Salvador Dalí, Philippe Starck and Antonio Gaudi. In dialog with sculptures, work and images from the gallery’s archives, a colour-blocked set design by the unbiased architect and curator Joan Madera noticed Dali’s lascivious ‘Saliva Couch’ set on an identical lipstick purple carpet, and Oscar Tusquets’ ‘Gaulinetta’ eating chairs positioned round a ghostly table-scape draped with floaty shantung silk surrounded by provocative photograph portraits by Georg Tony Stoll and Antony Goicolea’s glowing figures

Distributed for €4 in newspaper kiosks across the metropolis and fêted on the Pompidou’s personal bookstore on Wednesday night time, a newspaper by the brand new annual artwork evaluation Magma Journal (in collaboration with the museum) is pushing a Surrealist agenda between artwork and design too. The paper compiles textual content, illustration, photographic and portray contributions from 150 artists and designers (lifeless or alive), from the likes of Patti Smith, Georg Baselitz, Erwin Wurm and Orhan Pamuk – in addition to names from the firmament of the unique Surrealist motion – who all responded to one in every of 4 questions chosen from unique enquiries the group undertook between 1919 and 1957. It’s a playful format: a curated stream of intellectual thought packaged with out pretence.

Returning to the contoured white volumes of the brand new non-public ‘artwork house’ Maison Rocher within the Marais for a second activation this yr, Copenhagen puritans Frama joined forces with the Moroccan-based American agency Beni Rugs for an intimate dinner to disclose their assortment of fringed rugs in shades of ‘salt’, ‘sand’ and ‘soil’. Introduced in low, meditative scenes of communion or hung in summary drapes to spotlight their easy hand, the deceptively easy designs reveal infinite pure imperfections current within the undyed wool fibres.

In an identical vein of restraint – and a welcome sense of anti-design – the French design collective We Do Not Work Alone invited the property of the late Californian sculptor JB Blunk (1926-2022) as the newest addition to their ‘objects made by artists’ programme, that has beforehand included playful home merchandise by John Armleder, Marc Camille Chaimowicz and Annette Messager. Coinciding with a retrospective exhibition on the Fondation Martell in Cognac, the cosy satellite tv for pc present frames merch and a re-edited sauce pitcher from 1975 towards wallpapered images of Blunk’s extra formidable sculptural works, honouring his spectacular but little-known legacy within the American arts and crafts motion.

Somewhat additional afield, the collision of artwork and design continued at POUSH, the artwork incubator in Aubervilliers, the place the cupola of the 20,000 sq m residency set the scene for ‘Stool for Ideas’, a bunch design exhibition curated by POUSH director Yvannoé Kruger. Uniting disparate practices that think about each the unconventional operate and even the absent operate of a chunk of furnishings, POUSH residents and invited artists introduced a nebulous group present beneath the brilliant, ethereal dome.

Right here, the boundaries between artwork and design have been blurrier than ever, with Bureau Idéal’s Delft-inspired tiled fountain-meets-conversation-bench sitting close by a show of carved ornamental brooms by Thibault Lipski standing to consideration, and Robinson Ferreux’s elegant folded silk flooring gentle resembling taco shells or maybe moon cycles, in the event you squint. Natural kinds abounded in carved woods, ceramic and glass, with a marked sense of the handmade infused into kinds akin to 3D printing that have been, in truth, not. The present’s casual curation was an opportunity to take pleasure in artwork and design in free conversations round structure and the physique, inherently linked to the place the objects have been conceived.

With Paris Artwork Week set to land barely a month after Design Week, and together with Artwork Basel Paris’ much-anticipated transfer to the Grand Palais and Design Miami’s return to the Hôtel de Maisons, it will likely be an attention-grabbing second to match and distinction the attendance and affect of those competing moments within the metropolis’s autumn calendar. The outdated conceit of design as artwork’s little brother grafted onto key artwork dates as a mere complement appears to be fading out of sight, but timing and visibility is every thing when contemplating the seemingly countless alternatives to purchase, promote, exhibit and expertise design in capital cities at the moment.