Breaking New Ground

By Team IAnD

Photography: Courtesy: Maison&Objet

Monochrome variations by Emmanuel Bossuet

The September session of Maison & Objet laid the ground for upcoming designers, who propose to play the field with unusual material juxtapositions and poetic designs haloed by varying elements of surprise…

Each session, Maison& Objet offers seven up-and-coming designers an expression area,allowing them to present their work to professionals from around the world. This session, the lineup of designers focussed on the quirky, surreal and humourous in their products.

'Chapel' by Raphaël Groelly

'Boa Chair' by Réjean

With stress levels at generic high, global woes can well be intellectually dealt with, with designs of everyday products like a pedestal, lamp, chair, bookshelf, etc vacillating between heady traditional thought and strong progressive concepts. A message to this effect seemed to be the key to understanding the mindset of design promisarios at the Maison.

Barnabé Fillion

Barnabé Fillion works with ‘mixing smells’ - in better vocab – the art of perfumery, besides being a photographer, model and stylist. Developing his olfactory repertoire for the last 7 years, Barnabé has been working with different facets of perfumery, particularly interested in playing with the idea between innovation and tradition; mapping new territory, where perfumery can apply; new ways of making perfumes and new manners of experiencing fragrances.

Bien des Choses - 'simplicity works'

Bien des Choses a.k.a the trio of Gérald Perrin, Eric Van de Walle and Jules Cairon weave graphic works and furniture pieces stamped with humour and the unexpected. Their principle is simple – start out with a blank slate outside of known forms and build simple lines that meet primary needs.

Close at heels are designer duo Raphaël and Réjean. While one plays the card of exhaustive diversity, the other goes in for a cabinet of curiosities style, dressing up his designs in an old-fashioned, melancholy halo that is very much of our times. Halfway between poetic object and mental fantasy, Raphaël’s approach is to create a home landscape shifted comfort where irony rubs the dreamlike. Réjean, on the other hand, fascinated by ecosystems, creates encounters between shapes and materials, blending factual impressions between various fields such as architecture, sport, ethnology, etc.

Grégoire Delafforest's Poetic Stories 

An interior designer and architect, Grégoire Delafforest cultivates the design of inventive, light and minimalist objects; expressing poetic stories while renewing the ‘utilitarian’ genre. His interior design and furniture have earned him to be winner of VIA in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 projects.

'Masquerade' by Evor

Emmanuel Bossuet and Evor’s design worlds are characterized by the arts, where Evor’s approach to his paintings, sculptures and installations is through a boundless mixing of materials and inspirations, pushing the spirit of vanities to the edge of the disquieting and strange; while draughtsman/artist Emmanuel basks in the monochromatic domain, playing on his affinity for contrasts and detail in a bid to detonate the limits of visual effects and renew contemporary graphics.