Purple Art

[04/05/2016]

“L’Empreinte du geste” a group exhibition at Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris

At the time when questions are being raised about production methods and consumption habits with regard to manufactured goods, the arts and crafts métiers are opening up a new avenue. Their limited-series and tailor-made products are redefining our relations with objects, know-how, time, and their characteristic skills have a significance that goes beyond that of a production process and place them at the avant-garde of a project of collective living.

Produced by the Institut National des Métiers d’Art, “L’Empreinte du geste” presents 18 artists, such as Manon Clouzeau, Romain Langlois, Mona Oren, and Oudet Pascal, chosen by curator Éric Sébastien Faure-Lagorce to celebrate the uniqueness and the modernity of crafts métiers and their undeniable role in culture and art.

“The hallmark of skills” reveals the various forms that these skills take and their significance. In the workshops, they gradually shape the works. They do of course attest to the excellence of the manual skills used to make them, but above all to the human dimension, and the inherent values and universal emotions. Driven by passion, a shared sense of beauty, a creative approach, a respect for tradition, innovation, and exchange, the skilled gestures enrich the object with the artisan’s unique identity, experience, and artistic approach. these carefully considered gestures and unique know-how transform the banal into aesthetic objects that become part of our daily lives, leave a lasting trace, and establish the material and immaterial heritage of tomorrow’s world.

On view until April 3rd, 2016, at Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Les Arts Décoratifs, 107, rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris.

Photo Inès Manai