Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac's new ‘Home (very) Sweet Home’ exhibition groups art and design within an imagined residence
When Jean-François de Bastide wrote La Petite Maison, a novella based on a libertine who seduces an upright woman by impressing her with his pleasure pad, he could never have imagined it looking like the installation being unveiled at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac's Pantin location today.
‘Home (very) Sweet Home’ rethinks de Bastide's narrative, circa 1785, by integrating art and design elements in a space roughly configured to resemble a seven-room residence (including a ‘garden’ that consists of an Alex Katz rose painting and Elger Esser’s moody depiction of Giverny).
In exploring the notion of ‘sensuous architecture’, curators Matthieu Lelièvre and Alexandra Midal also looked back to Condillac's Treatise on the Sensations (1754) and Nicolas Le Camus de Mézières' The Genius of Architecture or The Analogy of that Art with our Sensations (1780). But Galerie Ropac exists in the present, not the past. And as such, the spaces present a series of contemporary vignettes that transform viewer into voyeur and blur lines between furniture and objet d'art.
The rooms express not only a variety of aesthetics but ways of engagement. To view the salon - with its modular set of low tables in burned wood from Normal Studio and Wiener Sitzmöbel seating - you need to look through a series of distorted peepholes. In the boudoir, Konstantin Grcic’s polyurethane loveseat anchors the interactive wallpaper by HEAD.
You can walk around the Floris Schoonderbeek’s orange bathtub, with its barbecue-like heating apparatus. But you can only gaze at the bedroom mise-en-scène that includes a trompe l’oeil marble-printed wingback chair by Maurizio Galante and Tal Lancman and Sylvie Fleury’s bronze casts of Alaïa pumps. Benjamin Graindorge’s amorphous lighting of the striking red El Ultimo Grito table in the dining room are very clearly functional, but could as easily be deemed sculptures. There’s a compact Tony Cragg piece in the space that functions as a wunderkammer. It can only be glimpsed from afar, making it all the more covetable.
Enter the kitchen and all you'll find is Martha Rosler's ‘Semiotics of the Kitchen’ (from 1975), a performance art piece in which the artist acts out aggressively with quotidian kitchen utensils. It is the one work in the show that is outside the Ropac collection.
Lelièvre, who works in-house at Galerie Ropac, explains that their interpretation is less literally sexual, more subtly unsettling. It was Midal who encouraged this darker reading that belies the show's name; knives are a recurring theme and Warhol's ‘Flash – November 22, 1963’ (the feature image) underscores the voyeuristic aspect.
In an early walk-through of the exhibition, Thaddaeus Ropac (one of Wallpaper’s 2014 Design Awards judges) noted how the Pantin gallery – a cluster of buildings located just beyond the Paris' ring road – provides the additional space to introduce unconventional programming. ‘We want to stay as an art gallery representing artists and their careers. But we like to explore other ways of showing art,’ he said. ‘We are showing art in a context of an environment where design also plays a role.’
Lelièvre says the project forced him to apply decorator touches such as the crown moldings to establish a bourgeois backdrop. But that really, he never saw the environment as an actual home. The unusually angled walls, he says, make this clear. ‘There's a feeling of bringing a view to what is architecture and design,’ he adds. ‘We are not decorators – it is not a question. But we are crossing towards it.’
Indeed, had we been crossing the threshold into an actual home, there would have been a doormat.
The concept for the exhibition was inspired by Jean-François de Bastide's La Petite Maison, a novella based on a libertine who seduces an upright woman by impressing her with his pleasure pad. The bedroom mise-en-scène features the 'Watermelon with Knife' painting by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1985, trompe l’oeil marble-printed wingback chair by Maurizio Galante & Tal Lancman, 2011, and 'Augenkreuz' eye artworks by Stephan Balkenhol, 2012.
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
-
The Lake House is a tree-inspired retreat making the most of Berlin’s nature
The Lake House by Sigurd Larsen is a nature-inspired retreat in west Berlin, surrounded by trees and drawing on their timber nature
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
The McLaren W1 is the latest in the sports car maker's tech-saturated Ultimate Series
First F1, then P1 and now W1, McLaren Automotive reveals its latest limited-edition supercar to the world, a £2m concoction of hybrid power and active aero that is, unsurprisingly, already sold out
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Paul Rudolph at The Met: ‘from Christmas lights to megastructures’
‘Materialized Space: The Architecture of Paul Rudolph’ opens at the Met in New York, exploring the modernist master's work through a feast of an exhibition
By Stephanie Murg Published
-
Konstantin Grcic’s Berlin exhibition imagines the new normal
‘New Normals' is a solo exhibition by Konstantin Grcic at Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (until 8 May 2022), imagining a post-pandemic future
By Hili Perlson Last updated
-
The making of ‘Cape’ suit, by Konstantin Grcic and Brioni
By Nick Compton Last updated
-
Established & Sons bounces back from the brink at this year’s Salone del Mobile
Established & Sons burnt brightly before almost burning out. Now new management and a creative old hand are out to prove the brand can deliver...
By Emma O'Kelly Last updated
-
From blueprint to silver screen: the Milan Design Film Festival shows craft in a new light
By Ellen Himelfarb Last updated
-
Laufen celebrates its 125th anniversary with an unconventional sculpture show
By Jessica Klingelfuss Last updated
-
Slab happy: Konstantin Grcic’s latest furniture collection is full of concrete ideas
By Ali Morris Last updated
-
OMA sets the scene for a collaborative performance at Faena Forum
By Ann Binlot Last updated
-
Monochrome makeover: Konstantin Grcic and ClassiCon celebrate 25 years together
By Sophie Lovell Last updated