Trendspotting in Paris: It’s time to energize our interiors

Recent upheavals may have taken their toll on our bodies and our minds but there is no reason to let this linger and spread gloom in our homes, the fount of our strength and well-being. For this reason, the forecasters at the Maison & Objet Observatory in Paris have prescribed a new trend itinerary that capitalizes on “Energies” in various forms and incarnations. We have to recharge our batteries, they say, and there’s no point in saving energy when it comes to creativity.   A lot of energy is needed, in fact, in spreading positive vibrations.  They foresee “optimism-inducing waves that are electrifying the established order, a beneficent  motion that is freeing our imaginations, reinvigorating unexpected aesthetics and activating alternative currents.”

Illuminations by Elizabeth Leriche

Elizabeth Leriche proposes that we derive energy from light.  She explains that as the universe was just beginning, light sprang forth, took shape and gave life. “Today we can still pick out and decipher the fossil trace of the first rays of light in the heart of major cosmic structures: Not only is light the origin, it is also the vehicle and memory of all energy.”  In fact, bodies and objects, materials and colors cannot be perceived unless they are surrounded by these elementary particles.  This is the reason why light is so basic and holds such fascination for artists and designers who are investigating issues involving form.  Light is form, after all, a material that uses its own perception as a medium.   Recent advances in technology have allowed us to transcend light’s function of illuminating things — it can now help us go deeper into our sensibilities and help us explore our emotions and perceptions. 

Leriche invited artist/sculptor Etienne Rey to the Maison & Objet show to mount an immersive installation called “Space Odyssey.”  We walked through the installation where rays of light, made visible by mist, produced refracted patterns that were dependent on our body mass, our movements as well as the interaction of our bodies with each other.  “It’s interesting that light is something intangible but we can make it tangible through space,” observes Leriche.  The experience was disorienting but amazing, like we were being transported elsewhere. The artist’s work has been described as “somewhere between immaterial sculpture and architecture, situating us in a space in which our points of reference becomes mobile, distances become elastic and balance precarious.”  Leriche wanted it to be “a journey to the heart of light as material.”  Like in the Kubrick film from which the installation gets its name, we undergo a passage, “a mental and sensory threshold situated at the meeting point of the physical world and experimentations on perception.” 

Johanna Grawunder’s “Linelight” wall sconce is a luminous bas-relief sculpture with pivoting blades that play with the surface of the wall it detaches itself from, creating a palette of reflected colors that become a singular, ephemeral work of art.  The owner can manipulate the blades so as to achieve his own unique lighting and ambience. The architect and designer from southern California wanted to create lighting that reflected how she is moved by the spectacle of nature: “I can see an incredible sunset over Mt. San Jacinto and be fascinated — fluorescent, pink, luminous. I instinctively understand where it comes from and how it happens, I am happy and at peace, impressed by the goodness of nature. I thank the cosmic entity. I understand it.”

The “Soffio” by Izumi Okayasu & IXI is another lighting fixture that derives from nature, or rather, our natural breathing which is what the name means in Italian. The Soffio is described by the designers as “a metaphor of the joy that resides in one’s heart.” The LEDs create orbs of rainbow-colored light that grow alternatively darker or brighter, almost as if they were breathing.  Izumi says that his goal is “to communicate with people by creating beautiful light and to have them share their appreciation of its beauty by gathering within the space it creates.”  He’s happy that when people experience the Soffio, they just stand there and watch in complete silence, gasping in amazement every now and then.  “They seem to view it as some ‘sacred space’.  They go away with positive feelings, delighted with this beautiful yet transitory light space that looked like you could touch but couldn’t.”

 â€œThanks to new technology, we can bring in poetry into a space,” concludes Leriche.  “We can even use optical fibers now to make lighted fabrics that could enliven our windows or our interiors. We are faced with objects that are living, and these objects give our interiors a new sense of soul.”

Psychotropia by François Bernard

Energy can be derived from our imagination, according to Francois Bernard. He encourages us to leave behind historicity and reinterpretation, vintage objects, historical takes, the tried and the true.  “There is a taste for strangeness right now,” he declares.  “Art Brut is more current than ever. Dream time is staging the prodigious effects of ritual and religious objects, and shamanic powers are initiating us into the poetics of the hidden and the magical.” 

He feels the need to break away from the rationalism that limits us, to cast off the beliefs that have been transformed to dogmas, to break the cycle of eternal return.  “We are opening new paths to less expected things, more like the byways of narcotics, the imagination, the brain, stains, formless things, things revealed, apparitions, disappearances.  Why not even ghosts, spirits, things arising from a parallel world, the invisible, everything that stimulates the imagination.” 

Looking at the pieces that Bernard curated for his exhibit, what can also be seen is a desire for formlessness.  He notes that although it’s paradoxical to talk about formlessness when it comes to decorative art which is traditionally formal, there is nonetheless an urge to put stains on surfaces, have patterns like Rorschach tests, explosive colors, things that are indeterminate, undefined, abstract.  “There is also an obvious Surrealism in the patterns. We are seeing prints with mouths or eyes. 50’s Fornasetti is currently very fashionable,” he observes.  This mania for strangeness can also be seen with lighting, like Ingo Maurer’s “Flying Flames” chandelier made of candle “strips” with LED flames.  Bernard is also in awe of “invisible powers at work” like with Guo Fenguy’s art works using delicate lines to call forth the uncanny image of spectral yet familiar figures and Myung Nam An’s wall sculptures of organic poetics that mix plants and flesh.  “They all share a wondrous power to destabilize our gaze in order to leave room for new perceptions that offer us a chance for renewal and help usher in the imagination of the future.” 

Funtasy by Vincent Gregoire (nelly rodi agency)

For renewed energy, Vincent Gregoire looks toward the most energetic of all: the youth. “The world is, you know, a bit turbulent,” he said at an interview at his exhibit.  “We need to escape this reality, we need to have fun! We need energy, smiles, laughter, whimsy, quirkiness, irony. And that is hugely the doing of the young generation.”

Raised on digital media, animé, amusement parks and video games, the juniors seem to have just what we need to jumpstart our daily lives and recharge our interiors.  Gregoire believes that by imbibing their vibrations, we can say to our parents and grandparents, “Wake up, don’t forget your inner hippie, rocker, rebel, punk! Be a little crazy!” 

He proposes irreverent mash-ups, offbeat reinterpretations, provocative collages and wacky combinations of allusions to neo-classical culture and digital pop-culture.  It’s a style that’s chic and striking like that of a modern dandy of iconoclastic bling, full of humor, parody and caprice.  “So a funny little cushion --- Hey, let’s put it on a very bourgeois sofa!  Let’s recolor grandma’s toile de jouy!”  It’s a tribute to the classics but also a revamp.  There should be an unusual little detail, something a bit off, a little surreal.  “Good taste, bad taste, it no longer matters,” Gregoire declares.  He cites taking a traditionally made rug with true artisanal craftsmanship but  somewhere in the pattern appears a pacman pixel as a tribute to the popular video game.  

He  qualifies, though, that “it’s really a knowing wink rather than something aggressive or shocking which had been the trend in the past because we were afraid.  Now we are starting to warm up to the world of tomorrow.  We want to start getting it ready and have fun with it.”