Mutations

Description

It is a resolutely contemporary book object, presented in the form of 10 notebooks, each comprising three papers, playing on materials, textures and transparencies to make the reader feel both visually and tactilely the notion of mutation. These notebooks are assembled between two blocks of silk-screened cardboard and maintained by a black elastic band.

Presented at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the exhibition "Mutations" proposes to explore the history of art crafts and to affirm their singularity from the perspective of the object, the creation, the technique and the material. Nine pieces have been commissioned from contemporary artists' collectives (craftsmen and art workshops, designers, visual artists) to respond to nine pieces from the 18th and 19th centuries from the collections of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. They have seized upon stone, earth, wood, glass, leather, paper, metal and textiles to deliver their respective interpretations of the themes of material, gesture, use, form, ornament, decoration, the senses and art. A special place is reserved for an emblematic object of the museum, the hanap "Les métiers d'art" by Lucien Falize, presented at the Universal Exhibition of 1900, and its contemporary interpretation. Each of these works, ancient and contemporary, are presented in the catalog for which they were the subject of a special photographic commission. Page after page, photographs of works from the collections of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, those of contemporary pieces, and those of the museum's own and external settings, complemented by photographs of inspirations drawn from nature, play on their visual proximity.