Talents So French: What approach do they take to materials?
Sunday 22 January —
14:00
- 14:45
The Talks — Hall 7
Description
Cédric Breisacher, Elise Fouin, Grégory Lacoua, and Victoria Wilmotte, the So French Talents at January’s edition, come together to talk about materials and the issues they raise. Which ones do they prefer? How do each of these designers, in their own ways, make use of them and make materials their own? Have new paths such as recycling or re-use, as well as the shortage of raw materials, had an impact on their creative process?
Nos partenaires : Material Bank
Participants
Victoria WilmotteDesigner & Founder - Victoria Wilmotte
Cédric BreisacherSculptor & Founder - Atelier Cédric Breisacher
Elise FouinDesigner & Founder - Elise Fouin Design Studio
Gregory LacouaDesigner & Founder - Studio Gregory Lacoua
Olivier WachéJournalist
Victoria Wilmotte
Designer & Founder - Victoria Wilmotte
Born in Paris in 1985, lives and works in Paris. She studied at Ecole Camondo in Paris and got her masters degree in Product Design at the Royal College of Art in London in 2008. Victoria Wilmotte created her studio in 2009. Her signature is known today as a brand thanks to her personal creations and collaborations with manufacturing clients such as Classicon, Haviland and Daum. She worked more recently with Théorème editions and now does her own production. She works on both industrial manufacturing or custom-made orders such as realizing monumental tables or marble fireplaces but also does custom-made series in industrial quantities for hotels or private clients. She works with galleries such as Pierre Bergé & Associates in Brussels - where she had her first solo exhibition in 2009 - Tools Gallery, Gallery Torri and she recently worked on a new collection for Gallery Jousse. She is fascinated by the direct link between manufacturers and craftsmen and is as at home working with stone and Murano glass as she is with concrete or collaborations with metal craftsmen. In 2015 she opened a manufacturing workshop to offer her skills to clients, she wanted a workshop with machines and tools where she could conceive and realize limited series and small production runs or fine-tune prototypes before manufacturing them on a larger scale… Victoria has always had a particular interest in materials and shapes as well as industrial and artisanal manufacturing processes. She is particularly fond of working with minerals and steel. Her methodical, meticulous work is like the work of a sculptor. Straight lines versus shaped angles and plays between fullness and emptiness help her bring a unique eye to the domestic world that today remains her key area of interest.
Cédric Breisacher
Sculptor & Founder - Atelier Cédric Breisacher
Cedric Breisacher is a designer-sculptor. He considers exploring what is Alive as the origin of his approach and research based on experimention and Doing. His aesthetic universe, that combines the organic with minimalism, is nourished by the contrast between natural forms and clean geometric lines, reminding us of the link between nature and the technique of woodworking. His sensitive, repetitive approach questions the process of creating an object. He uses wood shavings from his workshop to create new pieces and reuses materials by turning them into new materials to explore. This metamorphosis that transforms waste into fragments of memory is inscribed in a circular approach and a well-thought-out use of wood, trees and the forests. Thus, he revalidates discredited resources in a new life cycle by giving them OR waste in a new life cycle by giving it a new reason for being that is aesthetic, economic and social. He exhibited at the Venice architecture Biennial in 2018 and the prestigious Collectible Brussels fair in 2020.
Elise Fouin
Designer & Founder - Elise Fouin Design Studio
In her curious office, Elise Fouin is always ready to provide concrete demonstrations. How did she blend all her sources of inspiration to create such unique work? She comes from the Franche Comté region, where she grew up in a former monastery. She works on visual arts projects and does painting, plays the piano and dances. This shows how she is in harmony with Earth’s bounty and a desire for culture, somewhere between doing and being. She studied at the Ecole Boulle in Paris, first in goldsmithing, then moving on from making to designing, turning toward furniture design. A dual course of study, like a scale, to find her point of equilibrium. For her diploma project in 2003, she once again took a different path and successfully moved into the use of paper, as a designer who gives herself the freedom to be an artist. Because it’s first and foremost with her hands that this designer approaches materials. She loves surprises, is attentive to how materials behave, and she expects the emergence of unexpected shapes. Factories are a favorite playground of hers, where she picks up scraps and waste. Paper, wood, metal, glass, fabric and different kinds of plastic are the rejects she loves. She also prefers leftover and unused materials, but these bear no traces of demonstrative re-use. They are transformed, using reformulated categorizations, combined with new technology. Ever since, she has built her career in a variety of directions. This researcher, who is always looking to supply her personal laboratory, experiments with everything. Experienced in creating on different scales, she works with brands, design makers and institutions. This designer has more than one object or decorative trick up her sleeve. In all the projects she leads, there is play, lightheartedness and mischief, along with all the seriousness inherent in design.
Gregory Lacoua
Designer & Founder - Studio Gregory Lacoua
Gregory Lacoua is a designer. He hybrids skills, creates bridges between traditions and new uses or between different eras and technologies to create objects and places that meet the challenges of our contemporary world and link us with the emotions of others. From furniture to interior design, each new project lets him incarnate the mutations in our practices while heighte-ning the value of private and public spaces to make them part of our herita-ge. In 2021 he receive the City of Paris’s Grand Prize of Creation that hono-red the high quality of his career and his collaborations. Born in 1979, he graduated from ENSCI – les Ateliers — Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle and Ecole Boulle, the latter in furniture upholstery and decoration.
Olivier Waché
Journalist
A professional journalist for over 20 years, Olivier Waché specializes in the worlds of home, decor, design, and lifestyle. Working independently over the past decade, he collaborates with many magazines: Ideat, The Good Life, Le Journal de la Maison, Maison Créative, Résidences Décoration, Femme Actuelle… and more. A keen observer of evolutions in living conditions, he worked with le French Design by VIA on the composition of two books as part of the Domovision collection. In 2014, he founded WOC, a writing firm, which provides high-value content and advice to professionals: public relations firms, brands, fine craftspeople, and architects.