Artist Daniel Buren plants a forest of candy-colored sunshades for “Exentrique(s), travail in situ” at the Grand Palais
Following the installation by Anish Kapoor in 2011, Monumenta 2012 invited famed French artist Daniel Buren for the fifth edition of the annual challenge to create an installation that will fill the soaring nave of Paris’ Grand Palais. Buren’s take on the site-specific concept is “Excentrique(s), travail in situ”.
True to its name, what Buren has created can best be described as eccentric—a rainbow forest of hundreds of transparent, sunshade-like plastic saucers planted on flagstaffs spreads over the entire area of the 13,500-square-meter space, playing with the light pouring into the huge, glassy cupola to cover the ground with colorful reflected spots.
For this color-dominated installation, even the central cap of the dome itself has been saturated with a blue checkerboard to resemble the stained-glass windows of a church. Working as a huge illuminated forum, the whole display is conceived to attract, reflect, expend and multiply the light into fragments of joyful colors. At night the figure reverses and the glass roof is lit by the reflected colors of the saucers, due to a sweeping electrical device. The forest also features a relatively low ceiling that counterbalances the 35 meter height of the building.
At the center of the work is an interruption in the cover of the sunshades, with disk-shaped mirrors on the floor that make the area seem like a glade among the forest of umbrellas. Their pools reflect the steel structure of the roof above, and from there, the exhibition spreads out on all sides in a dotted landscape of colorful saucers.
In keeping with the idea of the eccentric—meaning away from the middle, existing on the fringe of the mainstream—the experience was designed to keep the center from swallowing up the rest of the space. Visitors enter on the north side of the nave and exit through the south wing, an intentional course that forces the visitor to cross the length of the expanse while avoiding the center. As Buren explains, the center tends to draw all the attention and leave the rest of the space empty.
Buren touches on the idea of the eccentric by diverging quite far from his typically austere and minimalist black and white vertical stripes which established his name. Though still highly recognizable, Buren’s new work hasn’t been seen before from him, all circles, transparencies, light and color.
Having now established himself as a master of color, Buren uses his basic figures—black and white vertical flagstaffs—along with the new round shapes of the saucers and mirrors. The circle is the key figure of the installation—the high, round saucers as sunshades, the round mirrors on the floor in the center. Buren started considering the circle after he realized that the whole architecture of the Grand Palais building was based on the pattern of this figure.
Continuing the 40-year pursuit of his work, Buren plays on forms with a mathematical approach. The game here consists in assembling tangent discs, all in contact with one another, filling the empty space as much as possible. Employing only four basic colors (blue, yellow, red and green) Buren displayed them after an alphabetical order, with blue appearing 95 times and the others, 94 times each. The installation is completed by a soundtrack comprising the repetition of the names of the colors in 40 different languages.
“Excentrique(s), travail in situ” is on display at Grand Palais through 21 June 2012.
The new Paris store for fashion designer Stella Cadente is a tunnel lined in gold.
Designed by French architects Atelier du Pont, the cylindrical shop showcases clothing and accessories within the rectangular recesses of its curved walls.
Gold leaf covers almost every interior surface, including the mannequins.
The theme continues on the exterior, where a glazed facade is surrounded by a gilt frame.
Stella Cadente + Atelier du Pont = fabulous stories
The story of Stella Cadente and Atelier du Pont goes back a long way. It’s a story of a friendship between two women – Stella Cadente, a designer, and Anne-Cécile Comar, an architect – and, of course, of shared adventures, with their complementary professions and points of view.
For a previous concept store in Dubai, Atelier du Pont came up with a design midway between an ice palace and a crystal maze for Stella Cadente. It espoused the brand’s style based on light, crystal, magic and transparent dress. Thousands of stalactites changed colour, creating an impression that the store had come alive.
Now they have teamed up again in 2012 under the skies of Paris. Clothed in glass from top to toe, the boutique stands out from the sober lines of the Boulevard Beaumarchais due to its gilded metal frontage. This new Parisian space breaks with the conventions of usual stores. Inside it is cylindrical, broken into two ellipses. The shop window display stand is out: the clothes are laid out on a large draper’s table, and the soft, practical design makes a mockery of the XXS-sized Parisian boutique. The final radical change is in colour, as the interior is entirely covered in gold leaf.
Architect: Atelier du Pont (Anne-Cécile Comar, Philippe Croisier, Stéphane Pertusier) Client: Stella Cadente Location: 102 boulevard Beaumarchais Paris 11th – France Completion: March 2012
Focus sur la Tour Phare, une œuvre architecturale de grande envergure, afin de relancer le quartier de La Défense. Un projet de l’architecte américain Thom Mayne de l’agence Morphosis. Avec 297 m de hauteur, elle sera la plus haute tour de France.
Our interview with the designers of New York’s new boutique hotel
You know a neighborhood has made it in New York when it receives its own abbreviated nickname. The latest addition to the map is NoMad—short for North of Madison Square Park—which is also fittingly the name of Andrew Zobler‘s newest lifestyle hotel. Zobler, who is also responsible for the Ace Hotel across the street, was initially drawn to the distinct architecture along that section of Broadway. While the Ace set the neighborhood in a thrilling new direction, Zobler set his sights on the preserved facade of the NoMad to create something entirely new. “The challenge from an overall perspective was that we didn’t want to do anything that was duplicative of The Ace—we wanted to compliment it,” he says. “That was the impetus for going with something that felt more luxury, more European and more romantic.” Using the Beaux-Arts style facade of the newly opened NoMad Hotel as inspiration for the interior, Zobler tapped French architect Jacques Garcia to complete his vision.
“What we really wanted was to explore Jacques at his roots, so we found a photograph of an apartment that he lived in when he was in his 20s in Paris, and you can see in the image the very early stages of the Garcia style—but much more bohemian and eclectic,” explains Zobler. “It was that image that we wanted to achieve—his very early work.” Garcia, who is behind Paris’ sleek Hotel Costes, sourced many of the NoMad furnishings directly from France, including a 200-year-old-fireplace.
Also brought over from France is Parisian boutique Kitsuné, now located within the NoMad thanks to Zobler’s young business partner Tanner Campbell. Says Zobler, “He identified the Kitsuné folks as having this sort of style that fit the hotel. We wanted to find people who were really talented but were also idiosyncratic.”
From the inside out, the hotel boasts a distinctive feeling that mixes European hospitality with downtown NYC details. We checked in with Garcia to learn a little more about his design process for the NoMad, from the opulently dark hotel bar to the bright, spacious bedrooms.
What drew you to tackle the NoMad Hotel project?
The fact that a lot of Americans (especially New Yorkers) are fascinated by the Hotel Costes in Paris encouraged me in a way to accept the challenge. With this Parisian success, from my experience, most New Yorkers who visited Paris visited the Hotel Costes property at least once—either for dinner or to say overnight. I wanted to find the same craze in New York for the NoMad Hotel—which, in my opinion, has both a French and American spirit.
What about the original space did you find inspiring?
The building is extraordinary. The fact that it was a historical building was a blessing for me. I was also very impressed by the views of the city from the rooms. Also, the volume of the ground floor enabled us to build the central veranda, which recalls the Hotel Costes courtyard.
What was your main goal when defining the interior aesthetic of the NoMad Hotel? What do you want every guest to experience with their stay?
My goal for public spaces in a general way is often the same. I had to go through the 1980s during which the public spaces were all white or grey and the lights were so white and cruel that the women looked like they were 20 years older. This didn’t please men, and therefore, men wouldn’t be interested in seducing women under such conditions. With the NoMad Hotel, I tried to do the exact opposite. This philosophy will be the case for all my future creations because these public spaces are made for encounters—and not to be satisfied from a specific aesthetic.
You’ve defined luxury as knowledge. So, what defines the luxury component of The NoMad?
The luxury component of the NoMad is the simplicity in the sophistication with a feeling of eternity.
Focus sur le clip du groupe Paris illustrant le morceau “The Cross-over”. Réalisée par Sebastien Desmedt et Thomas Lemoine, cette vidéo en slow-motion correspond très bien avec l’ambiance créée par le morceau. La vidéo est à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.
The infamous French artist creates an invisible installation of his dripping logos at the newest W Hotel
To celebrate the opening of their newest property, the W Paris Opéra, W Hotels brought in the best of young European artistic talent to interpret the spirit of their city. French artist ShoboShobo created a series of characters exercising with macarons, baguettes and wine props to decorate the hotel gym, while Dutch photographer Marcel van der Vlugt reinterpreted French icons into modern portraits of Paul Gauguin, the Marquis de Sade, Marie Antoinette and Louis Daguerre on pillows in each room.
However, not all of the installations are visible to the naked eye. Guests checking in to Suite 112 at the hotel are in for a special surprise that can only be seen with UV light. French artist Zevs, brought his trademark vision to the hotel with new work that is once again exploring not what is seen, but what is left to the imagination.
For the Suite 112 installation, Zevs worked with invisible ink that he created in a laboratory in New York City, mimicking the special red pigment used by police at crime scenes. “This red reminds you of the blood of a crime scene, but it’s also the most visible color, so I like the extreme aspect between the invisibility of the ink and the extreme visibility of the color,” he says.
We caught up with the artist at the opening night party, where a man dressed as a CSI expert shone a UV light slowly over the walls to reveal patterned Louis Vuitton wallpaper with Zevs’ signature dripping logos. “With the idea to place logos into a crime scene, I think simply the idea is to continue to investigate the territory of this fashion victim project I did last year,” he says, referring to a Sao Paolo Fashion Week event in which a naked model was “murdered” by a Louis Vuitton logo and Zevs outlined her body on the street in chalk.
Zevs works with existing objects, often in the advertising world and often playing on art and crime, adding a simple twist to make a big impact on passersby. In his infamous “Visual Kidnapping” piece, he demanded ransom after cutting out a giant image of a girl from a Lavazza billboard in Berlin. The stunt ended up netting a donation of half a million euros from the brand to the contemporary Parisian art institution Palais de Tokyo.
He began his “Visual Attacks” in the 1990s, painting advertisements as though they’d been hit by a bullet. The “Electric Shadows” series explored the idea of revealing the invisible by painting temporal shadows into permanent sidewalk fixtures. His “Liquidated Logos” work trademarked his drip technique to make any logo dissolve before the viewer’s eyes.
This summer in Paris, Zevs will reinvent his “Proper Graffiti” series, a technique he perfected in France in the ’90s, in which he erases existing graffiti to reveal a new fresco on a city wall.
Zevs’ playful use of logos is not so much an anti-branding message as a hint to onlookers to reexamine how they view and interact with logos so that it’s not such a passive relationship. Each invisible spot on the wall took on a new meaning when revealed at the Paris opening, as guests began to feel like investigators discovering essential clues in a case. Zevs also painted into van der Vlugt’s photographs, creating an eery aura throughout the room.
Intimacy and illusion in a range of contemporary photography seen at the show
Representing 120 galleries from 16 countries, the spring Art Paris Art Fair offers a prime opportunity to observe the latest tendencies in the modern and contemporary art markets. This year we found particular attention paid to photography, unveiling the intriguing progress of the exploration of intimacy.
The images that stood out to us traced a progression from a series of building facades taken in 2007 to today’s more revelatory shots exposing the private lives of those that inhabit such spaces. Some artists delved even deeper into the idea of home documentation with installations set up to peep through a keyhole.
Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf has built an enclosed booth, inviting visitors to sit on the chair in front of closed doors and look into the keyhole. As part of the PHPA 2011 project (Prix photo d’hôtel photo d’auteur—Hotel photos awards), Elene Usdin displayed the sketches she shot in hotel rooms through a peephole in the door of room 18 constructed for the exhibit.
As the camera pierces a sense of intimacy with the keyhole device, the practice of portraiture heads in the opposite direction as pictures seem to zoom in on the face, often depicting the subject blurred, heavily made up or disguised.
Korean artist Byung-Hun Min is gaining fame with his gray-tone “vanishing” portraits, questioning the ephemeral process of photography as well as the silence and simplicity characteristic of his culture.
Similarly focused on disappearing landscapes and backgrounds is the politically engaged series “Hide in the City” by the Chinese photographer Liu Bolin. Bolin uses his body as a medium of expression as he blends into the environment like a chameleon.
At the Italian Fabbrica Eos Gallery, Giuseppe Mastromatteo‘s photo series “Indepensense 2012” plays on truth and distortion by featuring nude bodies unnaturally intertwined to create vignettes opposing racial and cultural norms. Ruggero Rosfer & Shaokun also shakes up tradition by positing a new universal language that Eastern and Western worlds can share, both geographically and culturally, through the arts.
In a reverse approach from explicitly showing intimacy, the landscape itself becomes an intimate subject in a magical series by photographer Markus Henttonen. His photo of decorated trees in Manhattan marks a highlight in his recent body of work exploring relations between cities and their inhabitants.
Gerard Traquandi‘s beautifully dark photos feature organic details of twisted branches, bushwoods and transparent petals like nighttime-induced hallucinations. Their magical appeal is obtained by the technique of brushing resin pigments and wax into the photo, imprinting a photosensitive sheet.
The diptych and triptych style marked another recurring theme of this show. These two- or three-panel pictures result in a panoramic view responding to each other by echoing patterns and forcing the viewer to make the effort to mentally recompose the picture. This technique is brilliantly used by American artist Stephan Crasneanscki—founder of the soundwalk project—in his thoughtful landscapes like “The Woods of Schwarzwald—Martin Heidegger”.
The 2012 World Press third prize winner Alexander Gronsky uses the diptych technique systematically in “Mental Landscapes”, an image enhanced by the dramatic dimensions of a military show in China. Another piece depicts mice spread on rocks in some misty military-occupied scenery, emphasizing contrast while using the same range of colors.
The Parisian-based La Galerie Particulière features diptych and triptych photography by David Hilliard, an artist who uses the technique to tell personal stories in the form of a diary made of sequential imagery. Also included are a series of diptychs by Anne-Lise Broyer that are reminiscent of illustrations in a book, and the Czech Republic’s Inda Gallery presentation of works by Marta Czene, whose stories flow from a similar perspective.
By using a combination of optical illusions and strategic photography, George Rousse creates graphic signs and geometric images within photographs. By playing visual games, his photos appear to feature huge colored frames and objects within the landscapes he shoots, producing a dizzying effect.
For more information about the 2102 Art Paris Art Fair including comprehensive artists and gallery lists and informative videos check Art Paris Art Fair online.
Founder Patrizio Miceli on the recipe to his Parisian agency’s success
If “al dente” is synonymous with perfectly cooked Italian pasta, then Patrizio Miceli has chosen the right name for the communications agency he launched in 2004. Al dente has built some of the most creatively compelling advertising campaigns of recent, for luxury brands like Dior, Juliette Has a Gun, Thierry Mugler, Costume National and Hudson Jeans.
Part hedonist, part refined connoisseur, Miceli is known as a true Italian who cooks pasta for prestigious clients and throws lavish parties like the recent 500-guest carnival for Colette. Curious about the secrets behind the success of his Parisian agency, we sat down with Miceli to learn more.
Your campaigns are all so visually gripping. Yet the website has no interactivity, no links, just plain text—is that part of the Al Dente mystique?
A website is not where things happen! We don’t believe that institutional, dedicated main websites are the places to be anymore. We advise our clients not to focus on this. The proper places to be for advertising is to fish were the fish are: on the Web, on Facebook, on blogs, on YouTube. You must use networks and let the messages circulate. An institutional website must be the relay station of the expression of a brand through a wide range of various media. The whole has to be inter-connected.
As for our website, we are at the service of our clients, and as such, we have to be able to understand and promote their identity, and therefore our own identity must be sober and transparent. Our motto is: be on time at the right place with the right message to the right target. This know-how is our signature. Another way to communicate about ourselves is to organize pasta parties. We are thinking of making a special sauce from the house!
We can also show what we are capable of, such as what we did in 2009, when the economic crisis hit all of us in the field of advertising and communication. We launched a call for a motto making fun of the crisis. The authors of the best motto earned €100 rewards and we printed them on T-shirts. This campaign “Aldentelacrise” was met with great success. We sold about 20,000 pieces within six months at places like Colette in Paris.
Tell us more about the agency, the team and methods.
We work on positioning, branding and innovative campaigns. We provide global campaigns for our clients by telling stories through various media, written or digital, and by taking advantage of the wide range of technologies we now have at hand. We try to reset long-established brands in their tendencies. Our goal is to catch currents and trends. We provide a monthly report on digital and social trends to our clients, but this comes along with a deep comprehension of the identity of the brands we are in charge of. We spend a long time researching the history of the brands.
A good illustration of our creative process and methods is the pinball we invented for Dior‘s “Mise en Dior” necklace. The brief was to conceive a campaign illustrating the spirit of Dior’s jewelry through this particular semi-precious necklace. We were trying hard to find the twist that would make it. Someone in the agency was singing this song “Comme une boule de flipper” (like a bullet in a pinball). That was it! Then we embedded and quoted all the codes of Dior, like the medallion chair which is the starting point of the game. The music, a re-mix of classical Mozart, is part of the color of the atmosphere we have tried to put in it. It was so unusual and audacious, when you think of it, for a brand like Dior to campaign under the song of a pinball! At the end, it got the highest congratulations from top executives and Bernard Arnault himself, and we’ve counted more than 110,000 views on YouTube since it launched on the site in October 2011.
The Dior pinball, Thierry Mugler’s “Dream Machine”, among others—these campaigns consist of interactive games. Is participation the key to identification with a brand or a product? What does the playful dimension add to this involvement?
This is part of our crowd-sourcing strategy. We believe that one of the best mediums to carry and diffuse information is people. It is much more efficient than anything else. Mainly because you trust the opinion of your friends and network more than any journalist’s or expert’s advice not to mention ads and brands themselves! Besides, this buzz has the advantage of being much more cost effective than traditional advertising.
So the main challenge for us is to conceive appealing campaigns able to catch the attention and interest of opinion leaders, with respect to the brand identity. We believe that playing is one of the best ways to participate and feel involved, because the pleasure is in the game.
Are there technical challenges involved with that level of interactivity?
For the “Dream Machine” we created for Thierry Mugler’s Angel fragrance, we imagined the first multi-media application available on Facebook, iPhone and iPad. To create this app, allowing visitors to compose their own dream with sound and images out of the selection of five keywords, we had to go through an impressive process. We first conducted a poll among 50 people to analyze the words they would use to describe their dreams. Then we had to translate these words into images and create an algorithm able to deal with the five selected words and produce a film (the dream of each visitor) by digging through 250 video sequences and assembling the selection. More than 50 million combinations were possible. The voice was added through text-to-speech technology that allowed us to offer a personalized message along with the dream to every user. Launched in September 2011, the campaign drew more than 100,000 users.
Is that what you call “chic buzz”? What is the connection with luxury? And what is the role of art in your creations?
To be efficient, the buzz has to start like a whispered secret. The more the message seems to be out of reach, hard to get, rare, the more precious it is. The buzz also must reach the right people, hit the right network.
Being chic is telling a story as disconnected as possible from the product you’re trying to promote and sell. In order to create a “chic buzz” we often resort to art, which enables us to be really subversive, off-beat and unconventional with elegance and style.
For example, the campaign we made in September 2011 for the new Costume National fragrance “Pop Collection” pays tribute to Andy Warhol’s famous screen tests with ten contemporary artists and personalities that we shot with a Super-8 camera. The quotation is obvious, allowing us to introduce self-derision and humor, but the result remains very stylish.
But I think the most cutting-edge campaign we have ever made is for CNC SS 2012 campaign. It is called “Disrupted Generation” and uses cuts from Tumblr, data-bending, recycled pictures and distortions.
What’s next for Al Dente?
Aside from the campaigns for new fragrances by Chloé Parfums and Nina Ricci, we’re preparing the next campaign for Hudson jeans starring Georgia Jagger. We also keep going on with CNC. For their new campaign we will play on the self-portrait, with people invited to make their own from their cell phones. And…we are to open a branch in New York!
Lucie & Simon nous propose de découvrir leur série de photographies appelée “Silent World”. En effaçant des clichés de grandes places de New York et Paris ou encore en Chine et Italie tout signe de circulation et de vie, le rendu à découvrir en images et vidéos impressionne.
Shiny corrugated metal clads the two cascading stacks of apartments that make up this block in Paris by architect Stephane Maupin.
The two symmetrical sides of the M Building slope down at 45-degree angles towards a small central courtyard.
Some of the 20 apartments have gabled roofs, while some open onto balconies that face one another rather than the neighbouring school and adjacent cemetery.
The project takes place in the north Pierre Rebiere Street is a 600 meters long and 25 meters wide straight line.
It is surrounded by the Batignoles’ cemetery on one side and by the back entrance of the international high school Honoré de Balzac on the other. The transformation of this narrow abandoned street allows the establishment of whole string of new buildings.
The local rules for urbanism and the scope statements associated to this neighborhood minimizes plastic expressions. As a result it is not allowed to open any views on the cemetery. Thus directly implying a blind front for the future building and making it impossible to have normal front to front flats. The project impressively manages to get around those constraints: each of the flat benefits from both multiple sights and light sources at any time of day and year.
This climatic mechanism suggested the shape of the building.
Those solar templates sculpted internal slopes getting to the very heart of the construction. The 45° symmetrical slopes establish a triangular quadrant relieving the whole block from its compactness. As a result a central void appears where the dwellers can share a continually illuminated unique space. Hence as the light hits one side in the morning the opposite side will benefit from it in the afternoon.
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The shape of this new space is favorable to the composition of an unusual landscape. It is made from a cascade of Parisian roofs with its respective proportions and rhythm, as well as its apparent disorder. The whole is included in a succession of terraces which represent genuine extra room for the flats. Those terraces are so wide and comfortable that they become like private suspended gardens. In modern Babylonia, the Parisian Barbie rediscovers the joys of barbecue in the open air.
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The staging withdraws itself from the urban stranglehold.
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By refusing the frontal facing towards the street, the building creates a residential intimacy. The residents can communicate freely and develop the relations they desire. The unique vis-à-vis brings the dwellers together. Each resident is within reach of the other and that, without any road to cross. The building works as an inside village, within the town but still open towards the others.
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Materials contribute to the staging of this unique ship. The body of the building is treated as a white hull. The homogeneous coating on the street fronts creates a casual relation to the rest of the agglomeration. The inside is a metallic and shining sheathing. The flats are revealed in a play of light and reflect. The building even possesses a central space dedicated to sharing.
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Once the hall crossed, a simple staircase brings to an inside square at the heart of the building. The setting here is sympathetic. We wander on a wooden deck. We are surrounded by flowers and trees. Our sight gets lost in the foliage of the great neighboring trees.
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Client: Paris Habitat Team: SM Project: 20 housings Location: Rue Rebière, Paris Date: January 2012 Surface: 1800m² Cost: 2 500 000 €
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