“Art Paris, in its definition, is a French voice, concerned with promoting creation. Today, the boundary between art and design is porous. We are working on these fertile crossovers between universes. The hierarchization of the arts is totally obsolete.”
Guillaume Piens had already innovated upon his arrival as artistic director of Art Paris by composing a regionalist and cosmopolitan fair, inviting galleries beyond the mastodons of the capitals. He thus multiplied the discoveries of emerging artists or other cultures, allowing enthusiasts to become first-time collectors. He repeats the experience with Jean-Paul Bath and Sandy Saad, directors of the association Le French Design, and together they launch French Design Art Edition. “Design frees itself from the function of the object. I speak of an ambiguous object. One does not know if a sedimentary library of multiple layers of Pierre Bonnefille’s pigments is one or if it is a sculpture.
Art Paris already included, in the general sector, design galleries” — Béatrice Saint-Laurent, La Manufacture de Sèvres, Stéphane Custot who comes from PAD — but with this platform, new designers are discovered. There is also the exhibition of Camille Fournet, a fine leather goods house, presenting leather pieces by artists Orlan, Fabrice Hyber and others. On the north balcony, eighteen exhibitors: designers, editors, interior architects, gallerists, face the Promesse sector. “We note a return to the love of material, of savoir-faire.
French Design Art Edition presents contemporary decorative arts and numbered design, unique or in limited series.” Sandy Saad cites the lacquered table by designer Patrick Jouin, who spent five years on research and published it for the first time; the cabinet of Nicolas Aubagnac who revives forgotten materials — ebony, parchment silver leaf; the metallic seats of Pauline Leprince; the suspensions of Bruno Moinard in collaboration with Veronese…
The scenography is signed Jacob+MacFarlane, “depicting, seen from the nave of the Grand Palais, a pearl necklace where each stand is one.” Connoisseurs take note.