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Genius Loci is a not-for profit association under French law (1901 act) established in 2021 by Marion Vignal, curator and author specializing in contemporary art, design and architecture. The association is devoted to the promotion of architectural heritage and contemporary creation. Hidden or little-known architectural gems are brought to light and access is given exceptionally to private venues ordinarily closed to the public, enabling wider knowledge and discovery. The unveiling of such venues is orchestrated to resonate with contemporary creative arts so as to bring the spirit of a place back to life.
The Genius Loci association promotes artists and designers by providing a personal, intimate perspective of their work and history through its program of exhibitions in venues chosen for their singular architectural noteworthiness.
Breaking down barriers between artistic genres and building bridges between the past and the present, heritage and modernity, each exhibition brings together artists of different expressive modes – from visual arts, to olfaction, music and digital art.
With its experiential exhibitions, the Genius Loci association seeks to bring architecture to life in an emotion-filled sensory approach that aims to reveal the inner identity of a masterpiece. Visits of the exhibitions are open to all, by reservation and are aimed at as wide an audience as possible.
Genius Loci is an exclusive series of immersive exhibitions setting up a dialogue between architecture, design and contemporary art. Each edition offers an inside view of a private residence of exceptional artistic note, revealing the spirit of the place through artworks and especially commissioned works inspired by the personality of its creator and the creative genius resonating within the venue.
Conceived as an emotion-filled stroll, Genius Loci woos the public into a here and now that summons all the senses. An intimate experience of sight, sound and olfaction which draws its origins from the architecture and its enduring thought. Genius Loci is an international and itinerant project designed by Marion Vignal and carried out by the association that bears its name.
Join an international community of enthusiasts, connoisseurs and professionals of contemporary art, design and architecture. Genius Loci is a Paris-based not-for profit association whose purpose is to promote the legacy of architectural works together with contemporary creation.
Marion Vignal, curator
Marion Vignal is a curator and author. An expert in contemporary art and design, she promotes and supports young international creative talents through exhibitions and special commissions or projects. She studied literature and art history and is the author of several works on the history of design (Women Designers, a century of creation), interior architecture (Charles Zana, intérieurs) and olfactive art (Chanel, Les Editions de Parfum Frédéric Malle: the first twenty years). President of ida M., an editorial and artistic advisory studio, which she founded in Paris in 2015, she leads the Genius Loci association, established in 2021. She authored the Genius Loci exhibition at L’Ange Volant by Gio Ponti, in Garches in October 2021, gathering over twenty artists invited to engage in a dialogue with the spirit of the place.
Bénédicte Hurel, head of production
Trained in the management of luxury industries and at the Ecole du Louvre, Bénédicte Hurel works as a consultant in fashion and contemporary art. She led several assignments to design growth strategies for creative brands in New York and Paris. More recently, she has focused on advising private clients and corporate customers as well as personalities. A regular partner with the ida M. consultancy, since 2017, she co-founded the Genius Loci association in 2021.She heads the production of the Genius Loci series of experiential exhibitions. From 2008 to 2014, she was a board member of Make-A-Wish® France.
Bianca D’Ippolito, project lead
An Architect by training, Bianca D’Ippolito is a consultant in art, design and architecture. She divides her time between Paris and Milan and has devoted her career to the promotion of contemporary artists and to developing their works in an architectural setting. She advises private clients as well as architects and has delivered several projects in France, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States.
For its second edition, under the patronage of the Académie des beaux-arts, the Conseil économique, social et environmental, and the Mobilier national, Genius Loci is offering the public its first glimpse of an art deco masterpiece conceived by architect Auguste Perret in 1932, on the seventh floor of the building at 51 Rue Raynouard in Paris. The exhibition-experience Genius Loci, L’Appartement d’Auguste Perret, curated by Marion Vignal, is an opportunity to discover the multiple facets of the builder who wanted to “make architecture sing” – Perret the designer, the decorator, the lover of sculpture, music and poetry, the fancier of owls and angels. His neoclassical approach to the use of reinforced concrete, the purity of his aesthetic with its references to antiquity, as well as his key sources of inspiration are celebrated through works and installations, many created especially for the event, by 34 guest artists in disciplines ranging from sculpture to perfume.
A visionary architect, entrepreneur and pioneer of reinforced concrete, Auguste Perret created, with 51 Rue Raynouard, in the Passy district of western Paris, a work of full maturity. He was nearly 60 years old in 1932 when he installed his agency on the ground floor of the building and, on the seventh floor, his own private apartment with a panoramic view of the Paris skyline. By then Perret had already completed his building on Rue Franklin, the Ponthieu garage, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and Salle Cortot.
The construction projects of the Mobilier national building and the Palais d’Iéna were in the preparatory stages. The structure on Rue Raynouard became the epicenter of his life in Paris, and his apartment was the scene of numerous parties and receptions, with the architect playing host to friends who included many artists, writers and musicians. Perret conceived this wood and concrete showcase to reflect the quintessence of his art, down to the finest details of the furniture, mosaics, mirrors, wall lamps… After his death in 1954, his wife bequeathed the property to the Association Auguste Perret, an organization founded by the master builder’s last students. The association still owns the apartment, now a listed historical monument, and has preserved it to this day in its original state.
The son and grandson of stonemasons, the sculptor André Abbal (1876-1953) studied at the École des beaux-arts in Toulouse and later at the beaux-arts de Paris. In 1913 he participated in the Salon des Artistes Français with “Le Génie Luttant”, a work inspired by medieval Italian and French Romanesque art. Carved directly in stone, it caused an uproar among the defenders of the classical tradition. In 1932 Auguste Perret chose it to adorn the pediment of his reinforced concrete building at 51 Rue Raynouard. In 1937 he commissioned a new work from Abbal for his design of the Mobilier National building: “Molosses”, the two recumbent dogs flanking the main entrance. That same year, Abbal created “La Sculpture” for the façade of the Palais de Chaillot. His stone owl, also from the 1930s, was acquired by the architect, who had adopted the nocturnal bird as a personal mascot, for his private collection.
Trained in architecture at Paris la Seine UP9, where he studied under François Seigneur, Aldric Beckmann defines himself as a committed artisanal architect. His creations reveal the artistic eye of a creator inspired by the light, colors and scents of his native southern France. His architecture, at once refined, exacting and daring, elicits astonishment and emotion. After early experience with major international firms, in 2002 he joined forces with Françoise N’Thépé to found the Beckmann N’Thépé Agency, winner of the Nouveaux Albums des Jeunes Architectes and nominated for the Prix de l’Equerre d’Argent architecture award in 2012. After 18 years of collaboration on high-profile projects like the Massena housing complex, the university library of Marne-la-Vallée and the Unik housing complex in Boulogne, the partners decided to adopt a more personal approach in their work. Beckmann took over the solo directorship of the agency, which was renamed Aldric Beckmann Architectes in 2018 and continues to enjoy a steady stream of public and private commissions.
After graduating from the École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Paris-Belleville, Christian Biecher worked with the architect Bernard Tschumi in Paris and New York. He then made a name for himself as a designer before founding his own firm, Biecher Architectes, in Paris in 2011. A winner of the Albums de la Jeune Architecture in 1998, he was named Creator of the Year 2002 at Maison&Objet in Paris. The Minister of Culture awarded him the rank of Chevalier in the Ordre National du Mérite in 2009 and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2011. His designs have been spotlighted in a solo exhibition at the musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris (2002) and are included in the collections of the musée des Arts décoratifs, the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain and the Musée National d’Art Moderne-Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, as well as the Modern Art Museum of Lisbon. His work can be seen at Mouvements Modernes gallery.
A member of Auguste Rodin’s studio for 15 years, Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929) became the teacher of sculptors like Alberto Giacometti, Aristide Maillol and Germaine Richier. He achieved international renown for his monumental works like “Héraklès Archer”. In 1910 Bourdelle began working with Auguste Perret on the construction of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, creating the marble bas-reliefs on the façades as well as the interior frescoes mounted directly on reinforced concrete – a historical first. Later Perret commissioned him to create a bas-relief Pietà for the main entrance of Notre-Dame du Raincy, built in 1922. The sculptor became a close friend of the master of reinforced concrete, with whom he shared an admiration for ancient Greek culture.
Brazilian by birth and Parisian by adoption, Daniela Busarello comes from a family of architects. She completed her studies in Paris, at the École du Louvre and the Beaux-Arts. Seeking to reestablish a balance between culture and the ecosystem, this artist draws inspiration from nature within a perspective of harmony with humankind. A painter who upholds the concept of “genius loci” – the spirit of the place – Busarello explores various realms from which she gathers “witness materials” to be incorporated into her work. Her first solo show, entitled “VIDA”, at Mouvements Modernes gallery in 2020, was a true manifesto for environmental protection. In 2021 two works from her “Anima Mundi” series were selected for inclusion in the Mobilier National collection.
Since the opening of his “atelier-fleurs” (“flower studio”) in 2017, in a quiet Marais courtyard, Louis-Géraud Castor has been cultivating the principle that guided him for 15 years as an art and antiques dealer: seeking out beauty and transmitting it through his own means of expression. His natural material becomes a palette with which he recaptures the roots of the artistic currents that he admires: colors, like the Dutch primitives; texture, in the spirit of Jean-Michel Frank; the visible trace of the artisan’s hand. At once a gesture of French elegance and a partially impermanent work, the vase is no longer a simple container but an extension of living matter, an element that Castor now sources from contemporary artists like Mathilde Martin, Alana Wilson and Denis Polge. Rather than ornament and ostentation, this committed artisan favors seasonality and uncompromising freshness. Each creation becomes a symbol of life and life experience. Castor pursues an integrated approach in which the flower becomes a luxurious product through the care invested in a process in tune with the earth and its cycles.
After graduating from École Camondo in Paris in 1999, the designers Aki and Arnaud Cooren – of Japanese and French origin respectively – founded A+A Cooren Design Studio that same year. Producing spare, poetic designs with Japanese and Nordic roots, the duo finds, in each of their projects, a way of subtly reintegrating nature into everyday objects and décors. Creators of both industrial and artisanal objects, A+A Cooren was awarded the Liliane Bettencourt Intelligence de la Main prize in 2017 for “Tiss Tiss”, a patinated aluminum lowchair produced in collaboration with the craftsman David de Gourcuff. In 2021, working with the artist Miguel Chevalier, they unveiled a set of furniture blending design and digital art entitled “Dans un Nuage de Pixels”, one of the very last projects developed by the Mobilier National production facilities. A+A Cooren’s limited-edition creations can be seen at Carpenters Workshop Gallery.
This French artist lives and works in Australia, where she has been teaching at the Glass Workshop of Australian National University in Canberra since 2005. She cultivates a sensuous relationship with the material of glass, which she transforms by blowing, polishing and sanding. Nadège Desgenétez is the recipient of numerous prizes and residencies, including the Prix d’Honneur de la Fondation de France (Paris), the Saxe Award of Pilchuck Glass School in 1997 and 2004 (Stanwood, Washington, USA), the Prix de la Vocation of the Fondation Marcel Bleustein Blanchet (Paris), grants from ArtsACT and the Australia Council for the Arts, and residencies at Northlands Creative Glass (Lybster, Scotland), the Pittsburgh Glass Center and the Tacoma Museum of Glass (USA). She is represented by Mouvements Modernes gallery.
Born in 1980, this artist-photographer lives and works in Paris. Thomas Devaux has created a number of complex series that incorporate the founding values as well as the latest evolutions of the photographic art. Closely linked to painting and drawing, his work is an ongoing extension of his explorations of the themes of the sacred and profane that characterized his early output. Devaux is currently developing a set entitled “Cet Obscur Objet du Désir” comprising three series of photographs – “The Shoppers”, “Rayons” and “Dichroics” – in which he examines and challenges the new transcendences of the modern-day world. In the “Dichroics” series, created by mixing dichroic glass with photographs, he integrates the viewer’s body, making it blend into the color. The physical and formal confrontation with the viewer reveals an underlying element: the magic primitivism crystallized by the “totem form.” Devaux’s works are included in prestigious private and public collections, including that of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF).
At once a sculptor, decorator, metal craftsman, cabinetmaker, lacquerer and painter, the Swiss-born French artist Jean Dunand (1877-1942) is recognized as one of the grand masters of the Art Deco era. After early training in sculpture, in 1905 he began gravitating toward the decorative arts and metalcraft. In 1912 he started learning the techniques of lacquerwork, which he would use to decorate screens, panels, furniture and vases, as well as to create portraits. Dunand is also known for his contributions to the décors of the ocean liners L’Atlantique and Normandie. He collaborated with many artists, including Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann for furniture projects and Eileen Gray for lacquer creations. Starting in the 1920s he took on more and more projects with fashion designers, creating jewelry for Jeanne Lanvin, Madeleine Vionnet and Jean-Philippe Worth. He was also a master of the arts of mosaic and champlevé enamel decoration. His lacquer panels were selected for the collections of the Musée du Quai Branly in 2003.
The composer and sound designer Jérôme Échenoz is the founder of the studio Adorable and cofounder of Institubes, an independent electronic music label. A former DJ and rap producer, he has written lyrics for many singers on the young French music scene and regularly collaborates with designers and artists. He created the audio installation for the first edition of Genius Loci at L’Ange Volant, Gio Ponti’s villa in Garches, in 2021.
Founded in 2020 by the perfumers Jean-Claude and Céline Ellena, Atelier Ellena develops original, intriguing fragrances at its creative studio in the southeastern French town of Spéracédès. Upholding superb quality as a signature along with an artisanal approach focused on the raw materials, the father and daughter team composes fragrances for Frédéric Malle, Le Couvent, Houbigant, Laboratorio Olfattivo and 100BON. Born in Grasse in 1947, Jean-Claude Ellena followed in his father’s footsteps to become a perfumer. For 14 years he served as the house “nose” at Hermès, for which he created Terre d’Hermès. He has also published a number of novels and non-fiction works, including “The Diary of a Nose” (English edition published by Rizzoli Ex Libris, 2013). Céline Ellena is a longtime collaborator of the Symrise and Charabot groups and has created fragrances for The Different Company. She also writes a regular column for “NEZ”, the Olfactory Magazine. Both father and daughter mention architecture, design and literature as major sources of inspiration.
Born in 1979, the artist Loris Gréaud lives and works in the Paris region. Since the early 2000s, he has pursued an atypical path on the international arts scene. Trained as a flutist at the Conservatoire de Paris and founder of the electronic music label Sibilance Production, Gréaud expresses himself through music as well as sculpture, painting, video, performance and installation art. He creates unique environments that often integrate disruptive elements, tracing the thread of an ambiguous narrative that tends to blur the boundaries between fiction and reality in an effort to combine physical and mental spaces within a single surface. His projects have been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions in major museums in France and around the world, and his works can be found in a great many public collections, including those of the Centre Pompidou (Paris), LACMA (Los Angeles), the Musée d’Art moderne de Paris, the Pinault Collection (Venice), the Fondation Louis Vuitton (Paris) and the Rubell Family Collection (Miami).
After studying economics at ESSEC and Sciences Po, followed by a year in Tokyo working for the Japanese Parliament, Constance Guisset decided to pursue a more creative career and enrolled in ENSCI–Les Ateliers, graduating in 2007. In 2008 she was awarded the City of Paris Grand Prix du Design, the Prix du Public at the Villa Noailles Design Parade and two VIA project assistance grants. In 2009 she opened her studio in Paris, specializing in design, interior design and scenography. In all of her work, Guisset seeks to strike a balance between ergonomy, finesse and creativity. Her design pieces are attempts to explore the embodiment of movement through a sense of lightness or surprise, at the same time upholding a principle of comfort, accommodating the body and its movements. In 2010 she was named Designer of the Year at Maison&Objet and won an Audi Talents Award. In 2021 she received the medal of the Fondation Académie d’Architecture 1977, an honor accorded to “artists who contribute to the creation of architectural spaces of great quality.” Her work was featured in a solo exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 2017, and in 2021 her creations were spotlighted at the Villa Noailles in Hyères as part of the Design Parade festival.
Born in Leeds in 1972, this British sculptor studied art at Jacob Kramer College in his hometown, followed by Central Saint Martins School of Art in London, and later De Ateliers in Amsterdam. Thomas Houseago lived in Brussels for several years before moving to Los Angeles in 2003. His early work drew much criticism, making it difficult for him to become established as an artist. Unable to sell his pieces, he earned a living as a construction worker. It was not until 2006, when the Miami-based art collectors Donald and Mera Rubell acquired several of his works, that his career took off. Houseago’s work focuses on the representation of the human figure in space. Imposing, even monumental, his sculptures convey paradoxical sensations, between power and vulnerability. In addition, they retain traces of their production process. Houseago makes anthropomorphic sculptures with links to outsider art as well as experimental, hybrid pieces, working with a wide range of materials: wood, plaster, aluminum, concrete, bronze… The complexity of his oeuvre is nourished by a variety of influences, including Brancusi, Zadkine, Giacometti and African sculptors, and spanning the range from the Neolithic to the Renaissance to the modern era. The Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris devoted a retrospective to his work in 2019. Houseago is represented by Xavier Hufkens gallery in Brussels.
He revolutionized design in postwar Japan. After studying architecture in Tokyo and design at Kuwasawa Design School, Shiro Kuramata (1934-1991) opened his own studio, the Kuramata Design Office, in 1965. In the 1970s and 80s he specialized in interior design and the creation of furniture. A close associate of Ettore Sottsass, he participated in the Memphis Group, contributing several furniture designs. He also created shop décors for Issey Miyake in Paris, Tokyo and New York. In 1988 Kuramata moved to Paris. His style, tinged with wit and poetry combined with a quest for lightness and minimalism, is strongly influenced by 20th-century abstract artists like Piet Mondrian and Donald Judd. His work with transparency and light made him a pioneer, with creations like his acrylic “Luminous Table” from 1969, his “Glass Chair” from 1976, crafted entirely in glass, and his “Miss Blanche” armchair from 1988, using clear plastic embedded with rose blossoms. His metal mesh “How High The Moon” armchair (1986) reflects the same tendency toward immateriality. Kuramata was awarded the rank of Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1990. Today he is recognized as one of the preeminent designers of the 20th century, with creations in the collections of prestigious museums like MoMA in New York, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and the Vitra Design Museum in Basel. Kuramata’s work can also be seen at Mouvements Modernes gallery.
Born in 1991, the French designer Martin Laforêt now lives and works in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. His creations, inspired by artisanal skills and the intelligence of the hand, develop associations of forms and materials. His “Mould Objects” were modeled after precast concrete blocks, which are cast in a reusable form or mold, then cured in a controlled environment before being transported to the construction site. Like these prefabricated blocks, Laforêt’s objects were shaped by both their function and the constraints of the casting process. The technique links the resulting creations to the domains of industry and architecture. Martin Laforêt is represented by Carpenters Workshop Gallery.
Born in 1978, the French artist Benoît Maire lives and works in Bordeaux. After studying philosophy, he earned a DNSEP (national advanced art degree) at Villa Arson in Nice, followed by a research residency at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Based on philosophical concepts, historical texts and artistic references, Maire develops a polymorphous practice deployed in the form of lectures, publications and the curating of exhibitions. He nourishes his reflections on theory and its materialization in objects and texts through regular collaborations with other artists, a list that includes Étienne Chambaud, Alex Cecchetti and Falke Pisano. In the past several years he has focused his research on the question of measure, proposing a philosophical allegory as a calculation between humankind and its environment. Maire has been awarded prizes by the Fondation Ricard and CNAP, Image/Movement in 2010, the Cité Internationale des Arts in 2009 and the DRAC Aquitaine in 2005. In 2021-22 he was a resident at the Villa Médicis-Académie de France in Rome. His work is included in many prominent public and private collections, such as the FRAC Ile-de-France, the FRAC Aquitaine, the CAPC museum in Bordeaux, and the Centre Pompidou – Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris. Since 2018 Maire has been represented by Nathalie Obadia gallery in Paris and Brussels.
One of the most emblematic architects of the modernist movement, Robert Mallet-Stevens (1896-1945) studied at the École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris, graduating in 1910. He exhibited for the first time at the Salon d’Automne in 1912 and a few years later began contributing to the journal “L’Architecte Vivant”. He served as a pilot during World War I. For his first commission, the construction of a villa in Hyères for the Vicomte de Noailles in 1923, he highlighted the complexity of the volumes and surfaces. The following year he began teaching at the École Spéciale and designed the Villa Poiret in Mézy sur Seine. For the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts he created the Tourism Pavilion, with its garden featuring concrete trees. Mallet-Stevens also enjoyed creating film sets. Although he designed numerous private residences throughout his career, his only public project, in 1936, was a fire station in southwestern Paris. Besides the Villa Noailles, his best-known projects include the hotel-casino La Pergola in Saint-Jean-de-Luz (1928) and Villa Cavrois in Croix (1929-32), whose conception was based on the stated principle of “air, light, work, sports, health, comfort and economy of means.” Mallet-Stevens’s works can be seen at Galerie Jacques Lacoste.
The French designer Paul Mathieu lives and works in New York. After earning degrees from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and West Surrey College of Art and Design in the UK, he became known in the 1980s with his partner the American fashion designer Michael Ray (1950-1997). The duo opened an interior design studio in Los Angeles in 1985. Their Ice chair, spotted by Andrée Putman, became an emblem of their collaboration. Later, Mathieu continued as a designer on his own. Crafted from high-quality materials and making use of innovative technologies, his furniture designs combine excellence of know-how with a spare, pared-down aesthetic. His latest creations were featured in an exhibition at the Château La Coste wine estate in Provence in 2017. The works of Paul Mathieu and Michael Ray can be seen at Mouvements Modernes gallery.
As a sculptor and stage director, Théo Mercier focuses on the relation between the artwork and its environment. He was trained at the École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle (ENSCI) before moving to Berlin to pursue his studies at the Universität der Künste Berlin (UDK). After collaborating with Bernhard Willhelm on a collection of stage costumes for the pop singer Björk, in 2008 he assisted the American artist Matthew Barney on the operatic project River of Fundament in New York. From the beginning, Mercier’s work has been characterized by great formal freedom, striving to deconstruct the mechanisms of art history, objects and representations. His installations combine his own sculptures with objects and artifacts collected in his travels, with the goal of creating a visual choreography for the viewer. By turns an explorer, a collector and an artist, he pursues an aesthetic reflection at the crossroads of anthropology, geopolitics and tourism. After gaining recognition at the 2009 Salon d’Art Contemporain in Montrouge, he was awarded a residency at the Villa Médicis in Rome in 2013, and in 2014 was nominated for the Marcel Duchamp Prize. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris (2019), the Collection Lambert in Avignon (2021) and Luma Westbau in Zurich (2022). His sculptures have been selected for inclusion in many private and public collections, notably including the Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges-Pompidou, the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain (FNAC), the Collection Antoine de Galbert, the Musée d’Art Contemporain (MAC) in Marseille, the Fondation Yves Klein and the Fondation Emerige – Collection Laurent Dumas.
A native of Odessa, Ukraine, Chana Orloff (1888-1968) came to Paris to learn dressmaking and began working for the couturier Jeanne Paquin in 1910. The following year she was ranked second in the entrance exams for the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs. In parallel she worked at the Russian Academy, learning woodcut engraving and later wood sculpture. By 1912 she was earning a living as a sculptor and exhibiting in the major Paris salons. Her works were displayed at Bernheim-Jeune gallery alongside Matisse, Rouault and Van Dongen. When her husband, the poet Ary Justman, died in the influenza epidemic of 1918, leaving her to raise their child alone, Orloff became a portraitist catering to the Parisian elite. Women and children became a central theme in her work. One of her sculptures was a long, slender modern figure of a woman, visibly pregnant (“Femme Enceinte”, ca. 1920). In 1923 she published an album entitled “Figures d’Aujourd’hui” (“Figures of Today”) comprising 41 drawings of celebrities of the art world (Braque, Picasso, Matisse…) accompanied by poems by Gaston Picard. In 1924 she had an exhibition at Eileen Gray’s gallery. She became a French citizen in 1925 and commissioned Auguste Perret to build her a residence-sculpture studio at Villa Seurat. In 1935 she had exhibitions in Paris, New York, Chicago and Tel Aviv. Two years later she became one of the very few women artists included in an exhibition at the Petit Palais entitled “Les Maîtres de l’Art Indépendant”, 1895-1937. Orloff died in 1968, just before the opening of a major retrospective of her work at the Tel Aviv Museum.
Born in California in 1962, Rick Owens took classes at Parsons College of Art and Design in Los Angeles in the 1980s. There he met Michèle Lamy, the Frenchwoman who became his life partner, professional confidante and muse. He founded his fashion house in 1994. After presenting his first runway show in New York in 2002, he was named Best New Talent by the Council of Fashion Designers of America. The following year he moved to Paris. In 2007 he won the Cooper Hewitt Design Award. In parallel with the opening of his first Paris boutique in Palais Royal, he launched a furniture range, an extension of the aesthetic that he had been developing in fashion: rare and subtle materials, designs inspired by archetypes and a high-contrast palette of black and white. Uniting fashion, design and furniture, Owens cultivates a total and transversal vision.
After studying interior design at the École nationale supérieure des arts appliqués et des métiers d’art (ENSAAMA), Émilie Paralitici earned a master’s degree in textile design at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs (EnsAD) in 2004. After working for Céline as a textile designer, she served as artistic director of Lelièvre Paris before being named image and creative director of the Métaphores textiles label in May 2019. Graphics, the creation of fabric collections, visual identity… Her comprehensive approach is not unlike the creative direction of a couture house. Paralitici has transformed Métaphores into a laboratory for young talents, initiating collaborations with interior designers, scenographers, furniture designers and illustrators.
Born in Ixelles, Belgium, where his father, a French stonemason and owner of a construction company, fled to escape retribution for his involvement in the Paris Commune, Auguste Perret (1874-1954) was one of the foremost masters of modern architecture. After studying at the École des beaux-arts de Paris, he joined the family business to learn about modern construction techniques – including the use of reinforced concrete, which would become the basis of his entire career. In 1905, in association with his brothers Gustave and Claude, Perret became one of the first contractors to use reinforced concrete for buildings. Le Corbusier would get his start as an architect working with Perret, whose first high-profile success came in 1913 with the construction of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. He combined concrete with forms and proportions that often recalled French classicism, along with textures and surfaces finished in the style of dressed stone. The building marked a turning point, embodying a classical rationalist aesthetic that laid the foundations for his “Ordre du Béton” (“order of concrete”). Starting in 1923, Perret headed a workshop at the École des beaux-arts specializing in this material, and in 1930 he became a professor at the École Spéciale d’Architecture. Also in 1923, he completed the building that would be his lifelong pride: Notre-Dame du Raincy, a church northeast of Paris, nicknamed the “Sainte-Chapelle of reinforced concrete.” Between 1929 and 1932 he designed the building at 51 Rue Raynouard on the Passy hill of eastern Paris, where he set up his firm’s office on the ground floor and lived with his wife in the top-floor apartment until his death. In the 1930s Perret completed the buildings of the Mobilier National (1934) and the Palais d’Iéna (1937-46), now the headquarters of the Conseil économique, social et environnemental. In 1943 he was elected as a member of the Académie des beaux-arts. At the end of World War II, the Perret brothers undertook their last major project: the reconstruction of the town of Le Havre. The restored city center was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005. Today, most of Perret’s buildings are protected historical monuments. A lover of poetry and sculpture, a friend to artists and musicians, Auguste Perret was a prominent figure of Parisian intellectual life in the first half of the 20th century and earned immense international renown.
Both born in 1942, the French artists Anne and Patrick Poirier work together as one. Their oeuvre focuses on memory as an inexhaustible realm for the investigation of individual and collective identity, resulting in the production of large-scale models, most often presented in the form of installations. After completing their studies at the École des arts décoratifs in Paris, the Poiriers were residents at the Villa Médicis in Rome from 1967 to 1972, an experience that made an indelible impression on both artists. Since then they have combined disciplines including archaeology, sculpture, photography and landscaping to create reconstructions of ancient sites like the Roman port of “Ostia Antica” and “Domus Aurea” (Nero’s villa in Rome). Their works explore “the labyrinth of memory” as well as the imaginary ruins of the future and utopian cityscapes. In 1978 they created a bisque porcelain table centerpiece entitled “Ruines d’Égypte”, produced in collaboration with the Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres. Comprising nine elements (colossi, temples, staircases, pools and a pyramid), it was inspired by an Egyptian centerpiece produced by the Sèvres porcelain works in 1808 for Napoléon I. In the past few years they have expanded their work in landscape architecture with a number of large gardens in Italy. On June 23, 2021, Anne Poirier was elected as a member of the sculpture section of the Académie des beaux-arts (Institut de France).
Born in Nancy in 1931, Simone Prouvé studied weaving techniques, first in Paris starting in 1949 and then in Sweden and Finland in the 1950s. The daughter of Jean Prouvé, she grew up surrounded by the architects and designers who powered the modernist revolution, and later worked with many of them on various projects. In the 1950s she became a photographer and a pioneer of urban exploration, casting her eye over the landscapes and details of disused factories and industrial sites. In her work as a textile artist, her investigation of forms and materials has generated an oeuvre that oscillates between design, architecture and abstraction. In the 1990s, at age 60, she began exploring the possibilities of so-called “nonflam” fabrics woven from aramid and metal fibers. This innovation drew the attention of many architects, including Claude Parent, Christian de Portzamparc and Odile Decq, as well as the artist Dominique Gonzalez-Forster. Prouvé found endless ways of combining these fibers to make unique materials, which she then crafted into ethereal textile creations that interact with the light. Her woven stainless steel pieces are included in the collection of the Musée National d’Art Moderne.
Born in Ibiza in 1972, the Catalan designer Eugeni Quitllet has been juggling with forms, materials and concepts since childhood. After completing his studies at Escola de la Llotja in Barcelona, he met Philippe Starck, who invited the young Catalan to work in his studio in Paris. The two co-created several designs, including the “Masters” chair, their final collaborative project, produced by Kartell in 2009. Quitllet uses industrial design to give shape to new realities and an optimistic vision of the future. The projects of this multifaceted creator merge form and function, imbued with an explosive, sinuous elegance.
Born in 1900 in Trubino, Russia, and died in 1962 in Helsinki, the ceramist Michael Schilkin studied at the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture in Finland. In 1937, he obtained Finnish citizenship and in 1958 he received the Finnish Labour Medal. As a ceramist, Michael Schilkin created numerous sculptures of animals and human figures. His style is characterized by powerful forms and an often humorous tone. His ceramics are exhibited at the Design Museum in Helsinki and presented by the Eric Philippe Gallery in Paris.
Born in Paris in 1956, Martin Szekely is the son of the ceramic artist Véra Szekely and the sculptor Pierre Szekely, both of Hungarian origin. He studied at École Boulle and École Estienne, graduating with a degree in engraving. He first came into the public eye with the “Pi” lounge chair in 1982. There followed a string of collaborations with design labels like the Neotu gallery, Kreo gallery and Domeau & Pérès, as well as industrial groups like Heineken, JCDecaux, Électricité de France and Perrier, for which he designed a glass whose production runs have totaled 20 million units. In 1987 he was named Creator of the Year at the Salon du Meuble de Paris. Szekely’s works have been selected for the collections of many museums, including the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris, MoMA in New York and the MUDAM in Luxembourg. In 2011 the Centre Pompidou devoted an exhibition to him entitled “Ne Plus Dessiner” (“no more drawing”) and in 2018 the Musée des Arts Décoratifs et du Design in Bordeaux hosted a retrospective of his works. Szekely’s creations are exhibited by Mouvements Modernes gallery.
Born in Brest in 1976, Morgane Tschiember lives and works in Paris. A graduate of the École Européenne supérieure d’art de Bretagne in Quimper and the beaux-arts de Paris, she is the recipient of the 2001 Jeune Création / Espace Paul Ricard award. In her work she examines artistic practice as a whole, calling upon a wide variety of media and materials, ranging from books to monumental installations, photographs and objects, as well as sculptures in metal, ceramic, glass and wood. Her artworks are exhibited all over the world and are included in numerous private and public collections. Tschiember is represented by Albarran Bourdais gallery.
Born in Brazil in 1991, Bruna Vettori lives and works in Paris. After studying interior design and economics in Florianopolis, Brazil, she completed a Master of Fine Arts, specializing in painting, at the University of Porto and the Beaux-Arts de Paris. Vettori’s work focuses on the intersections between poetic writing and erasure, exploring the moment when writing breaks with the obligation to read. Her paintings constitute a realm of possibilities in which the word offers a place for subjectivity and the representation of being. Through a hybrid practice, combining painting, installation, writing, drawing, photography and video, the artist incites the viewer to reflect on the importance of voids and the limits of language.
Born in Brescia, Italy in 1971 and a graduate of Central Saint Martins School of Art in London, Francesco Vezzoli lives and works in Milan. His artworks explore the power of contemporary pop culture. Using a variety of media, including advertising, film and sculpture, he addresses ongoing preoccupations with the fundamental ambiguity of truth, the seductive power of language and the instability of the human persona. The results include a trailer for a remake of Gore Vidal’s “Caligula”, an ad campaign directed by Roman Polanski for a fictitious perfume called “Greed”, and performances inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luigi Pirandello and Salvador Dalí featuring stars like Catherine Deneuve, Cate Blanchett and Lady Gaga. His work has been exhibited by many respected institutions, including the Castello di Rivoli and the Fondazione Prada in Italy, the Tate Modern in London, the New Museum and MoMA PS1 in New York and MOCA in Los Angeles.
After an early career in fashion working with Pierre Cardin, Pierre Yovanovitch opened his interior design studio in 2001. His work expresses an “haute couture” aesthetic through carefully crafted volumes and proportions, the use of light and a discerning taste for unfinished and refined materials. A staunch defender of hand craftsmanship, he offers, through his creations, a vast arena of expression for exceptional artisanal skills. Very early on he began drawing inspiration from lesser-known movements, like the Swedish Grace period of the 1920s, and took an interest in American designers – Paul Laszlo, T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, James Mont, Harvey Probber… – whose work pointed the way toward his own style. Yovanovitch’s creative vocabulary is at once exacting and imaginative. An art collector himself, he makes contemporary artworks the focal point of his décors, regularly calling upon artists to create in situ works. Past projects have featured contributions from Claire Tabouret, Tadashi Kawamata, Alicja Kwade, Johan Creten, Daniel Buren, Giulia Andreani and Matthieu Cossé. His recent renovation and refurbishment of the Château de Fabrègues in Provence epitomizes the interior designer’s passion and creativity. After completing projects ranging from private residences to hotels, restaurants and museums all over Europe and the United States, Yovanovitch officially launched his own furniture brand in 2021.
A number of special commissions inspired by the spirit of Auguste Perret's Apartment have been created for this second edition of Genius Loci.
Deployed throughout the apartment, the olfactory installation by Atelier Ellena offers an unusual, creative insight into the hidden facets of the architecture, evoking the private life within these walls of Auguste Perret and his wife Jeanne, called "Perrette" by intimates. Every space from the vestibule to the bathroom is subtly infused with the odors of lily, bergamot zest, Chypre notes and papers, conjuring up impressions of a bygone era.
In the center of the spacious living room, the designer Constance Guisset dialogues with the immense white circle that Perret inscribed on the ceiling via a walnut and glass sconce strapped to a concrete pillar, an emblem of the architect's rationalist esthetic. Recalling Perret's devotion to sculpture, the artist Théo Mercier uses the living room's two bookcases as the backdrop for a selection of artworks, sculpture fragments and archaeological pieces on exceptional loan from his studio.
In the oak-paneled dining room, the Brazilian-born painter Daniela Busarello pays homage to Perret the builder through the finesse of a work on gauze produced using wax and pigments from minerals found in the earth beneath Paris. Sharing Perret's fascination with owls, the interior designer Pierre Yovanovitch collects owl figurines of all eras. For Genius Loci he created an armchair inspired by his favorite bird, a symbol of wisdom and vision.
In the bedroom, an installation on fabric by the Brazilian artist Bruna Vettori echoes Perret's passion for poetry. Entitled La Permanence, this calligraphic work incites us to perceive words as an elemental component of our own structures.
Dreamed up by Émilie Paralitici, image and creative director of Métaphores, Latitude was inspired by the furniture with hidden compartments designed by Auguste Perret in the 1930s. Comparable to the measurements of a sundial, Latitude symbolizes the building itself, standing silent and motionless as the changing shadows of the day play across its façade. The facings of this oak and brass end table are adorned with a graphic marquetry of leather and exceptional fabrics.
Above the bathtub in the hexagonal bathroom that brilliantly punctuates the apartment's sequence of spaces, the artist Thomas Devaux has placed a triptych of totems. Made of dichroic glass and gold leaf, they create an interplay of ever-changing reflections with the mirrors and the varying intensity of the ambient light.
In cooperation with the artist Vincent Leroy, composer Jérôme Échenoz conceived an audio mobile entitled Ferroconcrete, 51. Made up of speakers and Fresnel lenses, the piece becomes the culmination of the visitor's path through the apartment, an ethereal counterpoint to the concrete space.
The Catalan designer Eugeni Quitllet invites the viewer to enter a new dimension with Infinity Chandelier, a digital work in the form of a video NFT. An infinite chandelier emerges from the large white circle on the living room ceiling, connecting the Parisian apartment with the heavens - an original and surprising extension of Perret's architecture with the cosmos.
Created by Eugeni Quitllet especially for the exhibition Genius Loci, L’Appartement d’Auguste Perret under the curatorship of Marion Vignal, the NFT work Infinity Chandelier is a veritable gateway leading to light. Inspired by the spirit of the building at 51 Rue Raynouard, a reinforced concrete masterpiece built by the architect Auguste Perret in 1932, the Catalan designer conceived a vision of a monumental chandelier linking the earth with the cosmos. A symbol of creative energy, the chandelier is in perpetual motion, springing forth from the center of the white halo on the ceiling of the apartment’s living room. Like a dream-catcher, Infinity Chandelierchanges form as it turns into a passageway to another dimension, holding out an invitation to explore the creativity within each of us and the power of our intuition. An ode to inspiration, the piece fits in naturally with Quitllet’s oeuvre, creations that challenge the law of gravity and the limits of physical matter.
Infinity Chandelier is the first NFT in a series created by Eugeni Quitllet.
The work will be auctioned on the Load platform beginning October 13, 2022. After its sale, 20% of the proceeds will be donated to La Source, a non-profit organization founded by Gérard and Elizabeth Garouste that helps children living in difficult circumstances seek fulfillment through access to art and culture. — associationlasource.fr
With the kind support of Maison Ruinart
The Académie des beaux-arts is one of five academies that constitute the Institut de France. It supports creative arts in all its forms of expression by organizing competitions, awarding prizes, financing artists residency programs, attributing subsidies and otherwise ensuring the preservation of French cultural legacy. In order to carry out its mission, the Académie des beaux-arts manages a heritage built through donations and bequests as well as significant cultural foundations such as the Musée Marmottan Monet (Paris), the Maison Claude Monet and its gardens (Giverny) or the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild (Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat).
academiedesbeauxarts.fr @academiedesbeauxarts
At the crossroads between the public sector and civil society, the Conseil économique, social et environmental (CESE) engages with the Executive and the Parliament in the drafting of legislation and public policy. It is one of the three Assemblies acknowledged in the French Constitution alongside the Assemblée Nationale and the Senate as a forum for citizen participation. Its role is to foster informed public policy decisions and to rise to the challenges of the present and the future. CESE has been headquartered since 1959 in the Palais d’Iéna, a modern architecture masterpiece listed as a Monument Historique, originally designed by Auguste Perret in 1939 as a Museum of Public Works.
lecese.fr @cese_officiel
As a supporter of crafts and creation since the 17th century, Mobilier national’s mission is to ensure the preservation and restoration of its unique collections, to perpetuate and pass down exceptional craftsmanship. As a major heritage site, the institution is also an important actor of contemporary creation and promotes French decorative arts. The Mobilier national is a public administrative institution attached to the Ministry of Culture. It has been established in Paris since 1937 in a building designed by Auguste Perret located in the former gardens of the Manufacture des Gobelins.
mobiliernational.culture.gouv.fr @mobiliernational
Established in 1963 by Auguste Perret’s last students, the Auguste Perret association, chaired by Christiane Schmuckle-Mollard comprises urban architects, historical monuments and XXth century heritage specialists as well as architecture historians. Its purpose is to maintain and preserve the private apartment on 51, rue Raynouard in which Auguste Perret and his wife resided until their passing. It also contributes to showcasing Auguste Perret and his legacy by exhibitions and conferences. Since 2022, this Art Deco masterpiece, listed as a Monument Historique, has belonged to the Fondation Auguste Perret - Académie des Beaux-Arts.
The Services division of SPIE Industry & Services, a subsidiary of SPIE France, engages with its customers, offering a high level of dedicated expertise in smart, high-performance buildings. As a leader in its sector, the Services division strives to enable innovation in everyday practices. By contributing to making buildings ever smarter, friendlier to humans and more interconnected, its 3,200-strong workforce improve the comfort and well-being of occupants, reducing the carbon footprint to the environment. Thanks to its tight network of 90 proximity outlets, the nation-wide organization is able to capitalize on the wealth of its know-how so as to meet its clients’ expectations.
spie.com
An innovator in weaving and fabrics edition for interior design, Métaphores is a celebrated brand, inspiring and contemporary, belonging to Hermès’ textile division. Métaphores, the finest of French signatures, brings together the centenarian know-how of Verel de Belval for silk furnishings and Le Crin for hand-woven horsehair, as well as the mastery of textile materials with remarkable sensory and visual creativity. Métaphores fabrics are born of a subtle alchemy between materials, history and gesture, supported by its rigorous choice of partners and careful selection of raw materials. This overarching sustainable development approach lowers the environmental impact of the collections.
metaphores.com @metaphores
Ever since the 2017 opening of his flower-workshop in the quiet surroundings of a Marais courtyard in Paris, Louis-Géraud Castor has been true to the guiding principles that sustained him for over fifteen years as an art dealer: always seek and convey beauty in the expression of its essence. The natural materials he uses form an artist’s palette that draws from the roots of his most admired art genres: colors, as in early Dutch paintings; texture in the manner of Jean-Michel Frank and the visible hand of the toiling artisan. Compositions are conceived as tandems: part object, part living and changing beings. At once a triumph of French elegance and a partially ephemeral work, the vase ceases to be merely a container to become an extension of life itself, an element chosen among such contemporary artists as Mathilde Martin, Alana Wilson or Denis Polge. As a committed artisan, Louis-Géraud Castor would rather follow the demands for seasonality and freshness than obey demands for ornamentation and ostentation. Each of his choices is elevated to symbolize living matter and lived experience. His approach is consistent with a sustainable movement in which flowers are once again seen as luxury items deserving of respectful care owed to mother nature and its seasonal rhythm.
@castorfleuriste
For its first edition under the patronage of the Embassy of Italy, Genius Loci rekindles the spirit of L’Ange Volant, designed and built in Garches, on the outskirts of Paris in 1927 by architect and designer Gio Ponti. L’Ange Volant is the Italian master’s sole architectural work in France and a quintessential reflection of his multi-faceted artistic expression. Levity, transparency and colour, his major inspirational themes, are celebrated for the duration of the exhibition-event through the creation of more than twenty international artists with various art forms, of which several commissioned works that draw inspiration from the spirit of the place. The works take pride of place in all of the villa’s focal points, from the entrance to the garden. The full spectrum of expression, ranging from sculpture to perfume, brings to light one of the many facets of Gio Ponti’s L’Ange Volant in a kaleidoscopic show encompassing the past, present and future.
L’Ange Volant was conceived by architect and designer Gio Ponti for the Bouilhet familly, then owners, directors and descendants of the founder of Christofle, the silverware maison. Nesting on the hillside in Garches, close to the Saint-Cloud golf course, this neo-Palladian villa built between 1925 and 1927, was designed down to the most minute detail by Gio Ponti. It was a seminal moment in his architectural work, his only construction project in France and one of the most well preserved in the world.
Gio Ponti was at once a painter, writer, architect, designer and a scenographer. All facets of his creativity are in evidence in this early career work, recently restored by its original owners. Every feature of the villa bears the hallmarks of the master, from walls to ceilings down to door handles and engraved mirrors and was also conceived as an ode to love. Indeed, its very construction was the setting for a couple to be formed, as Tony Bouilhet, the commissioner of the villa and Carla Borletti, Gio Ponti’s niece who came from Italy to visit her uncle on the building site first met. Thus, the architect named the villa L’Ange Volant as a nod to the lovers who were married there in 1928, barely a year after the inauguration.
This private commission allowed Ponti to realize his prototypical casa all’italiana, a concept of an Italianate villa envisioned around the notion of the joy of living, of theatre and empty space. With artefacts and art as permanent guests.
A celebration of the spirit of a place, Genius Loci is the first contemporary art and design exhibition open to the public to be staged in L’Ange Volant.
Born in Cyprus in 1967, Michael Anastassiades founded his London design studio in 1994. The world of jewelry is one if his main sources of inspiration. His creations, mostly light fittings, blend decorative art with sculpture and industrial design. They feature in the permanent collection of such cultural institutions as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Victoria & albert Museum in London. He partners with many designers and manufacturers among whom are Hussein Chalayan, Swarovski Crystal Palace, Flos and Lobmeyr. Michael Anastassiades was elected Designer of the year 2020 by Maison & Objet, in Paris. Michael Anastassiades is represented by Nilufar (Milan).
Spanish-born Maloles Antignac divides her time between Paris and Madrid. Through the medium of sculpture, her work engages us to revisit our assumptions on feminity and our relationship with nature. A resident of the Martell Foundation in 2020, in 2018 Maloles Antignac took part in the creation of Toguna, an enduring collective work focused on the transmission of knowledge, at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. The Gabrielle & Guillaume gallery devoted a solo show to her Fertility Cycle in 2019 under the curatorship of Marion Vignal. Her works have also been exhibited in Chile and Mexico.
Born in 1975, architect Franklin Azzi lives and works in Paris. A graduate of the École Spéciale d’Architecture, he also studied in Scotland at the Glasgow School of Art. In 2006, he founded the Franklin Azzi Architecture Agency. A proponent of a pioneering cross-disciplinary approach mixing architecture, interior design, design and contemporary art, he conjures novel living and working spaces (The Bureau, Be In for LVMH), rethinking urban planning with careful consideration for legacy built areas (Beaupassage on behalf of Emerige) also devising dismountable and removable structures (the rooftop Pavilion at Galeries Lafayette).
BBPR is a group of Italian architects formed in 1932 by Gian Luigi Banfi (1910-1945), Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso (1909-2004), Enrico Peressutti (1908-1976) and Ernesto Nathan Rogers (1909-1969), four architecture graduates of the Polytechnic University of Milan. During the second half of the XXth century, they led a number of brutalist projects in Milan; offices, residential and palace renovations. BBPR’s philosophy is at a midway point between tradition and modernity. The original shapes of their furniture designs are infused with by the belief that functionality precedes any advancement in aesthetic ideas. Successful partnerships with large corporations such as Olivetti, Arteluce and Arflex have placed the studio at the forefront of spreading a new culture of design. BBPR is represented by Nilufar (Milan).
Born in Brescia, Italy in 1958, Maurizio Donzelli’s work involves drawings, painting, sculpture, textiles and installation querying the meeting point between reality, its perception and its artistic representations. Imbued with philosophical examination, his work explores our relationships with nature and reality through visual phenomena relating to colour and images. Drawings, which he holds up as an intellectual pursuit, are an integral part of his work. Symbols of our singular vision, the mirrors reflect the unavoidable inaccuracy of our understanding of the world that surrounds us. Maurizio Donzelli is represented by Galerie Italienne (Paris).
Sophie Dries is an architect and designer. Having worked with Ateliers Jean Nouvel, Pierre Yovanovitch and Liaigre agencies, she founded her own studio in Paris in 2014, and in Milan in 2017. Her work blends architecture, interior design and design in a cutting-edge approach in which traditional techniques engage a conversation with modernity. Her furniture designs and ceramic works are a quest to find the ‘cosmic essence of matter’. Sophie Dries is represented by Nilufar (Milan).
Born in 1974, Latifa Echakhch is a French Moroccan visual artist who lives and works in Martigny (Switzerland). Oscillating between surrealism and conceptualism, her work calls into question the importance of symbols and reflects the tenuous nature of modernism. Exhibition held at international museums such as Centre Pompidou in Paris, Tate Modern in London or the Fondazione Memmo in Rome have been devoted to her productions. She has also taken part in group exhibitions at the Museum of modern art in Paris, at the Palais de Tokyo and at MoMA PS1 in New York. Latifa Echakhch won the Marcel-Duchamp Prize in 2013 and the Zurich Art Prize in 2015. She was chosen to represent Switzerland at the 59th Biennale Arte 2022 in Venice. Latifa Echakhch is represented by kamel mennour, Paris / London.
Sound designer and composer Jérôme Échenoz is the founder of the Adorable studio and co-founder of Institubes, an independent label for electro music. A former DJ and rap music producer, he is the songwriter for many young artists in the French music scene. He is a regular contributor to sound creations in collaboration with designers and artists.
For Genius Loci, Jérôme Échenoz has composed an original musical score, meant as a sound portrait of the villa, which will be broadcast as a sound installation in the villa L’Ange Volant in partnership with Bang & Olufsen.
Barnabé Fillion is a French perfumer-creative artist. He devoted himself to olfactive art having completed his training as a photographer and a botanist. For over ten years, he has been devising fragrances using traditional artesan fabrication techniques. He has drawn inspiration from his numerous trips and his compositions are made predominantly from natural ingredients. He is constantly on the lookout for ways to create hybrids between innovation and tradition. Barnabé Fillion regularly partners with fashion brands and artists on specific projects. He was chosen by the Australian organic cosmetic brand Aesop to create its perfume line, whose latest Rozu fragrance was designed as a tribute to Charlotte Perriand, designer and pioneer of modernism.
For Genius Loci, Barnabé Fillion is creating a bespoke perfume, inspired by the quintessence of L’Ange Volant by Gio Ponti in the form of an olfactive installation during the exhibition.
Unconventional creator, artesan, graphic artist and poet, Piero Fornasetti (1913-1988) holds a unique place in the rich tapestry of Italian design, without a doubt one of the most prolific decorative artists of the XXth century. His overflowing work, both art and artesan in a testament to his boundless imagination, his virtuosity in the art of storytelling through peerless furniture, decorative items and decors. Piero Fornasetti is represented by Nilufar (Milan).
Roberto Guilio Rida was born in Milan in 1943 and is a somewhat atypical artist. Starting out as an antique dealer, he befriended Murano masters, who thought him the craftsmanship of glassmakers. From 1973 onwards, he specialized in XXth century art, creating light fittings and furniture covered or cut-out with glass and crystal. Without regard for cultural trends, he leads his audience into a strange world in which science-fiction clashes with Italian Rennaissance under an intense, mineral glare. Roberto Giulio Rida is represented by Nilufar (Milan).
Born in Mulhouse in 1972, Laurent Grasso lives and works in Paris and New York. His films, sculptures, pictures and photography are steeped in an unsettling world fraught with uncertainty. His ability to conjure mystery-filled atmospheres blur the lines of our perceptive and cognitive senses. He has commissioned many public and private works and is exhibited in major institutions. In 2020, he was invited by the Musée d’Orsay to produce the Artificialis installation-work, partaking in a dialogue within the event-exhibition titled Les Origines du monde. An artists in residence at the villa Médicis in Rome in 2004. Laurent Grasso was awarded the Altadis prize in 2005, the Marcel-Duchamp prize in 2008 and the Meru Art*Science Award in Bergamo in 2017. In 2015, he was decorated with the medal as Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Laurent Grasso is represented by Perrotin (Paris).
Born in 1981, visual artist Milène Guermont lives and works in Paris. On completion of an engineering studies, she entered the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, where she gained acclaim for her poly-sensorial concrete works blending poetry and innovation.
She created the Instants monument to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Second World War on Utah Beach, the Causse tomb at the Montparnasse cemetery and the monumental installation Phares displayed on Place de la Concorde in Paris in 2015, on the occasion of the ‘international year of light’ initiated by Unesco.
For Genius Loci, she will exclusively reveal a textile creation made in the context of the construction in Paris of the Maison Guermont, conceived as an overarching work of art bringing together over sixty companies and artesans.
Born in Paris in 1978, Camille Henrot lives and works between New York and Berlin. Her works are the scene of many media of expression (installations, sculptures, drawings and videos). Recipient of a silver Lion award for best young artist at the Venice Biennale in 2013 for her Grosse Fatigue work, Camille Henrot revisits our assumptions on object typologies and established thought processes. Camille Henrot’s work is on display in dedicated exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, at the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery and at the Fondazione Memmo in Rome. She won the Nam June Paik prize in 2014 and the Edvard Munch Art Award in 2015. Camille Henrot is represented by kamel mennour, Paris/London.
Mathias Kiss is a French contemporary artist with Hungarian roots, born in Poissy near Paris in 1972. He lives and works in Paris. He reflects on the question of deconstruction of the classical legacy, bluring the borderlines between art and artesan, in the tradition of movements such as the Arts & Crafts or the Bauhaus school. His works featured at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 2016, and at the Palais des Beaux-Arts of Lille in 2019. In 2013, he was given the Wallpaper Design Award, then in 2016, the Young International Art Fair Brussels Award. He was president of the jury for the Grand Prix de la Création de la ville de Paris for 2020 – in the artistic crafts category.
Since they met at l’Ecole d’architecture des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the subsequent foundation of their own studio in 2000, Karl Fournier and Olivier Marty have displayed a singular signature on projects of all scales. Heirs to a rich vein of classical training, they lay claim to an immersive approach to their profession, encompassing architecture, interior design and furniture. Architects of the Yves-Saint-Laurent Museum in Marrakech, the Chiltern Firehouse hotel in London, instigators of the renovation of the Los Angeles landmark Château-Marmont, Studio KO devises bespoke furniture for each of its projects, a source of original experimentation, encounters with new textures, techniques and lighting.
Born in Katowice, Poland, in 1979 Alicja Kwade is a visual artist who lives and works in Berlin. Alicja Kwade’s work calls into question our reality and reflects the notions of time and space of our daily lives. Her sculptural work explores the material world drawing from mundane objects as well as raw materials such as glass, wood and copper. The WeltenLinie work was presented at the Venice Biennale in 2017, in which Alicja Kwade presented her singular exploration of space and perception. In 2019, she created a monumental installation for the rooftop of the MET in New York. Alicja Kwade is represented by kamel mennour, Paris/London.
Belgian landscape architect Bas Smets founded his agency in Brussels in 2007. He devises a wide range of projects internationally, from parks to private gardens. He notably authored the ten hectare Thurn & Taxis park in Brussels and the seafront at Himara, Albania. He was selected to conceive the Parc des Ateliers for the Luma foundation in Arles, in close collaboration with architects Frank O. Ghery and Annabelle Selldorff. Eliane Le Roux is a French-Argentinian architect, graphic arts and decorative designer. She founded her Paris-based studio, UNDR, in 2014 at the intersection of art, graphic arts, and technology. Together they have devised a series of outdoor furniture items, of which the Salta bench in Belgian stone exhibited exclusively at Genius Loci.
Marion Mailaender is an interior architect and designer who splits her time between Paris and her native city of Marseille. A figurehead of the emerging French scene, she devises a wide range of creations, from objects to scenographies, residential and commercial projects. Each of these reveal the artist’s audaciousness and humor with which she dispatches conventions, with no fear of breaching the limits of good taste, upturning references, codes, materials and typologies. She has collaborated with the artist Sophie Calle, the fashion designer Amélie Pichard and the Colombian designer Esteban Cortazar.
Born in Osaka, Japan in 1980, Nao Matsunaga lives and works in London. His work is steeped in myths, symbols, objects and rituals, addressing the issues of duality and opposition, mixing up the media such as clay or wood, or by setting opposites side-by-side: somber and shining, organic and geometric. Nao Matsunaga is represented by Nilufar (Milan).
Born in 1976, artist and designer Julian Mayor lives and works in England. A graduate of the London Royal College of Art in Design Products, he gained recognition for his welded steel sculpture works. Each of his creations is computer generated before it is developed in his workshop. In partnership with British designer Tom Dixon, his work was exhibited in 2004 at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and at the Museum of Arts and Design, in New York. Julian Mayor is represented by Armel Soyer (Paris).
Studio Nucleo is an artists and designers collective based in Turin in Italy. Founded in 1999 by Stefania Fersini, Alice Carlotta Occleppo and Alexandra Denton, the studio is led by Piergiorgio Robino. Nucleo reaches into contemporary art, design and architecture. The studio’ s work, inspired by time, humanity and evolution, blends in theories with experimentation to tell a story about the past, present and future. The creations of Studio Nucleo have gained worldwide exposure, notably at Centre Georges-Pompidou in Paris and at the MoMa in New York. Studio Nucleo is represented by Nilufar (Milan).
Born in England in 1969, French-Irish designer Damian O’Sullivan lives and works between Paris and Brussels. A ceaseless attention to the uses and the choice of materials underpins his approach to the objects he designs, be they table, fashion accessories, decorative or furniture items. In each of his project, Damian O’Sullivan seeks to surprise, sometimes in almost invisible ways. A graduate of the London Royal College of Art, he lectured at the Design Academy in Eindhoven and founded the O’Sullivan studio in Brussels. His works have notably been edited by Hermès, Delvaux, Philips, Rosenthal and Louis Vuitton.
Architect and designer, Domenico, aka Ico, Parisi (1916 - 1996) embodies the modern Italian style of the 1950s. In 1945, Ico Parisi set up the first exhibition of contemporary furniture in Como. His connections with Gio Ponti, Lucio Fontana or Bruno Munari were influential to his vision of architecture and furniture design. He created interiors, wooden and metal furniture, glassworks, jewelry, architecture projects, which he devised either alone or with his wife, Luisa. Many fabrication firms edited his furniture (Singer & Sons, MIM, Cassina, Cappellini, Altamira…). Ico Parisi is represented by Nilufar (Milan).
Architect, designer, painter, draftsman, founder of the DOMUS review in 1928, Gio Ponti hails from a long line of Italian masters whose multi-faceted lifework extends over six decades. Born in Milan in 1891 and deceased in 1979, Gio Ponti’s creativity is displayed in public and private architectural projects, churches, universities, residential condominiums. A prolific designer with a passion for ceramics and craftsmanship, he was a lifelong advocate of Italian art de vivre and a major proponent of post-war Italian design. His most famed works include the Pirelli tower, built from 1956 to 1960 in Milan, the Planchart villa in Caracas and the Superleggera chair, created for Cassina in 1957.
Blending neo-classicism and modernism, L’Ange Volant villa, in Garches on the outskirts of Paris - commissioned by Tony Bouilhet and built between 1925 and 1927 - was his first architectural completion outside of Italy. For the first time, Gio Ponti set down the basic tenets of his concept for a Casa all’italiana. Every detail, from door handle to painted ceilings, engraved mirrors and lighting fixtures is part of an outline pointing towards his ideal of an all-encompassing work of art.
Born in 1961, painter and visual artist Agnès Sébyleau lives and works in Paris. Trained in art history and modern literature, her initiation to the creative arts came gradually. Drawing her inspiration from the minimal aspect of objects, she confections scultpures out of crocheted string, re-assembled mesh and stitched incisions. Agnès Sébyleau is represented by Armel Soyer (Paris).
Born in Huddersfield (UK) in 1980, Jonathan Trayte lives and works in Margate, in Kent. Our greed-fueled consumerism and the influence of advertising on our decisions are recurring themes inspiring Jonathan Trayte’s work, which offers a reinterpretation of the natural world, creating surreal facsimile in saturated colours out of varied material. He explores the psychology of desire through surfaces, materials, lighting and colour. His work has featured in many international exhibitions, notably the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2015. In 2019 he delivered a monument for the London council. Jonathan Trayte is represented by Nilufar (Milan).
Trained at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, Alix Waline studies textile at La Cambre school in Brussels. Inspired by the cells in the human body, she was introduced to the aesthetics of pointillism and worked on projects with hotels (the Chess Hôtel) and restaurants (Kinugawa, Table et Akrame) in Paris in partnership with the interior design agency Gilles & Boissier. Her drawings mix organic shapes with abstraction. Alix Waline is represented by Armel Soyer (Paris).
Sabatina Leccia is a French artist- born in 1984- who lives and works in Montreuil near Paris. Her work balances between Art and Craft. In 2012, she graduated from MA Material Futures at Central Saint Martin’s School of Art and Design in London where she started to work on experimental embroidery. In 2015, she exhibited her Painting Embroidery series at Amélie de Borchgrave gallery in Bruxelles and was selected for an Art Residency in Estonia where she developed Poetic Plastic.
In 2019, Sabatina Leccia was choosen by Patou to embroider the costume of the academician Barbara Cassin in collaboration with La Fabrique Nomade and Baqué Molinié studio.
Several works have been especially commissioned for Genius Loci. Inspired by the spirit of L’Ange Volant, they take pride of place both inside and outside of the villa.
Architect Franklin Azzi authors his first artistic feat with Le Saint, a light installation referencing the spirituality of the place and of its creator. Conceived as an inaugural work of the Genius Loci experience, it floats as if by magic in the entrance courtyard.
In the garden, artist Mathias Kiss spreads out the wings of the angel over the lawn of the villa. This polished stainless-steel work symbolized the overshadowing figure of L’Ange Volant.
Inside the villa, architect and designer Sophie Dries reveals a Murano glass mirror incrusted with stones referencing Gio Ponti’s passion for minerals and his obsession with transparency. English artist Julian Mayor minted a low welded steel table that shimmers like a block of crystal. Spanish artist Maloles Antignac shaped a sculpture inspired by the iconography of the hand, one of the iconic themes of Gio Ponti’s work in ceramics. Textile sculptor Agnès Sébyleau unfolds her tentacular wings as the fingers of a prodigious hand. French-Irish designer Damian O’Sullivan presents a double candle holder, inspired by the union theme as a tribute to the quest for light and levity of the Italian designer, as well as a vase whose shape is both sensually round and geometrically rigorous.
Composer Jérôme Échenoz attempts to capture the spirit of the place in realizing the sound installation that accompanies the visitor strolling from the entrance through the rooms upstairs, while Barnabé Fillion created a perfume especially for Genius Loci that seeks to resonate with the spirit of the locale and draws from the major inspirational themes of Gio Ponti: mirror effects, transparency and lightness of being. The scent is unveiled in stages throughout the exhibition, note after note.
Through his Spectral Ponti work commissioned in partnership with Diorama productions for Genius Loci, Laurent Grasso attempts to probe the supernatural dimension contained in the spirit of a place. His film draws the spectator through the digital mock-up of the villa l’Ange Volant by Gio Ponti using LIDAR scanner technology. It follows the footsteps of Spectral Orsay, recently unveiled at the Musée d’Orsay. Spectral Ponti reveals the artist’s vision of the villa which is at once ultra-contemporary and timeless. Laurent Grasso has made a habit of immersing the spectator in a troubled world in which our perceptive boundaries are blurred, mystery emerges, offering a journey through time. His way of making worlds collide chimes as a distant echo with the ideas of Gio Ponti, for whom architecture was meant as a collection of spectacles.
Nestled in a lush hillside between Paris and Versailles, L’Ange Volant villa was conceived in 1927 by Gio Ponti for the Bouilhet familly, founders and heirs of the Christofle silverware maison. Devised as an all-encompassing whole, from doorhandle to the garden, this country retreat is the only architectural work of the Milanese master in France. Long the preserve of the familly and friend circle, L’Ange Volant has in more recent times opened its doors to enthusiasts of Gio Ponti’s work for visits of short stays.
For more information on visits or rentals: angevolant.com @villa.angevolant
Charles Christofle was twenty-five years old in 1830, when he created the company that bears his name. The company quickly acquired a reputation for expertise and elegance thanks to its prestigious clients: King Louis-Philippe, Napoleon III, and the liner Normandie, which set sail with more than 40,000 pieces of silverware on board. Christofle’s craftsmanship was further recognized by winning many awards at the Universal Exhibitions from 1855 to 1937. Later, the brand joined the collections of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs and the Louvre. Though the Maison is rich in history, Christofle still continues to grow and appeal to the newer generation thanks to its contemporary tableware creations that reinvent the conviviality of today and tomorrow by making the art of sharing a true art of living. Christofle has successfully collaborated with artists and designers with the aim of creating pieces that respond elegantly to contemporary uses.
christofle.com @christofle
Diorama is a 3D production company, founded in 2016 Gilberto Bonelli and Gianni Vesentini, both graduates of Milan Politecnico school of architecture. With bases in Milan, Paris and Verona in Italy, Diorama specializes in artistic direction and creative work in imaging, video, virtual reality and digital content for architecture, design, scenography, fashion, urban development, art and cinema.
diorama.eu @diorama.eu
Bang & Olufsen delivers bespoke audio solutions suited to all occasions and needs. Founded in Struer, Denmark, in 1925 by Peter Bang and Svend Olufsen, two pioneers whose drive and vision permeate the company’s strategy to this day. For close to a century, Bang & Olufsen has been striving to push the limits of technology ever higher, which has kept the company at the edge of innovation in sound.
bang-olufsen.com @bangolufsen
castor-fleuriste.com @castorfleuriste
IMPORTANT: Visits to the exhibition are fully booked. Access without a personal reservation will not be permitted.
The Genius Loci exhibition can only be accessed by reservation and is free of charge. Visits are guided by art mediators for groups of up to 15 persons maximum.
Each reservation is individual, non-transferable and may not be modified. Should you wish to make a reservation for several people, please make a reservation for each individual and indicate the contact details of each visitor.
In case of cancellation, kindly let us know as soon as possible and no later than 48 hours prior to the date of your visit.
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Pictures taken by visitors to the Genius Loci exhibition are restricted to personal use only. On no account can they be used for commercial purposes. Link towards fair use policy
For security reasons, luggage and suitcases larger than 40 x 18 x 30 cm are not admitted.
Join an international community of enthusiasts, connoisseurs and professionals of contemporary art, design and architecture. Genius Loci is a Paris-based not-for profit association whose mission is to promote the legacy of architectural masterpieces together with contemporary creation.
«The Genius Loci association grew from our aspiration to create and share unique experiences around architecture, be they artistic or interpersonal. Our mission consists in reviving and revealing singular venues, to set a new vibration around them, to perpetuate their spirit, to tell the story of their creator and their owners, to make their singularity resonate through artistic conversations involving various creative means of expression that extoll contemporary creation with a view to establishing a fertile dialogue between the past, present and future» – MARION VIGNAL
If you are a corporate entity and wish to support Genius Loci as an official partner.
Corporate donations are open to tax rebates of up to 60% under sections 238bis of the Code Général des Impôts under the threshold of 5 per 1000 of turnover. Entities must be established in France for tax purposes.
Support the actions and artistic program of Genius Loci. Meet with artists and creative minds of the contemporary scene and get access to exclusive experiences.
YOUR BENEFITS • Invitation to openings and collectors’ preview of the Genius Loci exhibitions. • Private visit to the annual Genius Loci exhibition presented by the curating team. • Meet with artists from the Genius Loci programs, opportunities to visit their studios. • Genius Loci exhibition catalogue. • Several times a year, invitation to exclusive Genius Loci experiences coinciding. with major get-togethers of the contemporary art, design and architecture calendar (Venice art or architecture Biennale, Milan Design week , Art Basel…).
PRIVATE VISITS IN SMALL GROUPS TO • Building sites for landmark restoration projects in the presence of their architect. • Villas and private palaces in the presence of their proprietors. • Emerging artist studios in their presence.
Annual dues - solo € 1 000 / duo € 1 500
The duo option affords the right to subscribe: - For two persons, each having access to benefits linked to membership. - For one person, and the privilege of coming with one guest of their choice to each of the events.
Membership opens rights to tax* rebates up to: - 66% of the amount donated for private persons (€ 340 solo / € 510 duo after rebate) - 60% for corporate entities ( €400 solo / € 600 duo after rebate)
*Under sections 200 and 238bis of the Code Général des Impôts under the threshold of 20 % of net taxable income and 5 per 1000 of turnover for corporations. Persons must be established in France for tax purposes.
As a supporter and ambassador of Genius Loci, you will uphold the actions and artistic program of the association. You will enjoy a front seat on the creative art scene and gain access to exclusive experiences around architecture, contemporary art and design.
YOUR BENEFITS • A preview visit of the Genius Loci exhibition with the curator prior to the official vernissage. • Exclusive Invitation to a performance especially commissioned for the Genius Loci exhibition. • Invitation to the vernissage and to the collectors’ preview of the Genius Loci exhibitions. • Private and bespoke visit with artists of the Genius Loci program, visits of their studios. • Genius Loci exhibition catalogue. • Several times a year, invitation to exclusive Genius Loci experiences coinciding with major get-togethers of the contemporary art, design and architecture calendar (Venice art or architecture Biennale, Milan Design week , Art Basel…).
PERSONAL BESPOKE VISITS TO • Building sites for landmark restoration projects in the presence of their architect. • Villas and private palaces in the presence of their proprietors. • Emerging artist studios in their presence.
Annual dues - solo € 3 500 / duo € 5 000
Membership opens rights to tax* rebates up to: - 66% of the amount donated for private persons ( € 1 190 single / € 1 700 twin after rebate) - 60% for corporate entities ( €1 400 single / € 2 000 twin after rebate)
U.S.-based donors can support Genius Loci’s activities in a tax-efficient way through a contribution to the American Friends of Genius Loci at the King Baudouin Foundation United States (KBFUS).
Association Genius Loci 11 rue Léopold Bellan 75002 Paris Board of the Genius Loci association Marion Vignal, president Bénédicte Hurel, secretary Malachi O’Rourke, treasurer Genius Loci is an association under the 1901 act, Registered under number W751261664