Acumen editors' top five picks
The Émergences Biennial returns to Pantin, within the walls of the Centre national de la danse, to celebrate contemporary creation. A must-see event for all design lovers. Before the doors to the event open, Acumen has spotted five must-see talents, from April 10 to 13.
Jean-Baptiste Durand, from clay to F1
"Classic" is how Jean-Baptiste Durand describes his early career. After a spell at the Beaux-Arts in Saint-Étienne, the aspiring designer joined Mathieu Lehanneur, who designed the last Olympic torch. An experience in the world of luxury goods and a Rado Star Prize later, Jean-Baptiste Durand was in the midst of a major rethink: "I realized that the life I was looking for as an independent designer, with a lot of media coverage, was a kind of smoke and mirrors, and wasn't taking me down the path of the life I wanted to have. I longed for a quieter, happier life. I left Paris and moved to Le Havre. With my girlfriend at the time, I opened a ceramics workshop. We made unpretentious things, but despite everything, I felt that this kind of creative spark was still there, latent. After we split up, I kept my part of the studio, but nobody was interested in my work." In a last-ditch effort, the designer took part in Paris Design Week in 2023, where he presented a series of experimental vases. "During the 4 days of Design Week, I made the sales I'd made in 6 months in Le Havre, so I thought maybe I'd keep going." He followed this up with the Collectible fair in Brussels, where he presented a chair, the Spring Chair. In it, he evoked his childhood love, Formula 1 racing, with bright colors, cables and springs. A unique aesthetic that conjures up the imaginary world of the machine, which will be on show at Pantin, including the strange column or totem Voices in my head, where earthenware and electronic components come together.
Lucas Zito Studio, plastic sculptures
Graduating in 2019 from the venerable Design Academy Eindhoven, Lucas Zito imagined " a project centered on recycling cigarette butts through 3D printing ". But it fell through: "The Covid epidemic arrived at that time and it was very complicated to have a project that was centered around things people put in their mouths. " Nipped in the bud, his creative process continued along the path of 3D printing tout court. This gave birth to the BUOY modular lighting fixtures, made from locally recycled plastic granules or from French sources. These highly sculptural lamps come in transparent white or coffee color. Silhouettes to compose as you please.
Lou Motin, memories of the IPCC
Lou Motin likes to explore the question of future transmission, archaeology, fragments, " what remains of our contemporary period ". After initial training in theater set design at ENSAAMA-Olivier de Serres, the artist branched out into the world of art foundry before embracing that of stone-cutting. Recovered stones, "mainly pieces of wall", surround his studio, "a former industrial stone factory that was abandoned in the 1950s". These elements become the support for a very singular work. " This series is called Fragments du GIEC. I've been working on it for over two years now, and it consists of a transcription of the latest IPCC report, but in binary code [a sequence of 0s and 1s], a computer code ", explains the artist. Added to this computer language are diagrams from the report, whose meaning is lost: " Everything becomes completely abstract . Made by hand, using punches and chisels, Lou Motin's pieces, presented at the Biennale, summarize 2 of the 180 pages of the semi-abbreviated English version. Her goal? To transcribe the whole.
Théo Charasse, designer and manufacturer
A Parisian who graduated from ESAD in Reims, Théo Charasse describes himself as a jack-of-all-trades. Including designer, but "not necessarily industrial", he adds. He's also hesitant about the term "manufacturer": "I'm still discovering what suits me best, in fact. I'm testing quite a few things at the moment, to appreciate the limits of what you can do yourself via prototypes." Among his first tests was À portée de main, a diploma project in which he went " to observe amateur techniques, but also vernacular manufacturing techniques". He adds: "I had also drawn up a list of materials that I would describe as unapproved, things that are not valued in the design field, that are even blacklisted ." Among the materials in question is chipboard, "which is hidden underneath veneer all the time ". The young man is also interested in glass bottles, from which he creates lighting fixtures and shelves to be discovered at the Biennale de Pantin. "I became interested in glass bottles, which I found quite a lot in DIY stores. It's a noble material, but not necessarily easy to work with. So I decided to try and divert this industrial object by cutting it up and removing the neck and base. All that's left is an almost neutral cylinder, with almost no industrial trace . The result is a series of transparent pieces in warm tones.
Alice Trescarte, Brutalist ceramist
Artistic director Alice Trescarte is also a ceramist. " Initially, it was really a personal pleasure, but then ceramics became an obsession ," she recounts. An obsession that translates into the creation of boxes and other deceptively commonplace objects. Their appearance is raw, brutal and profoundly organic. She describes them as sculptures. An aesthetic grammar that the designer has gone on to transcribe into seats and stools. " They're reminiscent of very rustic tripod-type wooden stools. I was inspired by this object because my technique, which is in fact a cutting technique using a block of clay or earth, really reminded me of that object . Thanks to a skilful blend of minerals, her creations appear to be extracted from a mass of stone. " The way I work is more like a sculpting method, because I start from a block, from which I remove the superfluous parts, just like the process of a stone sculptor. I also refer a lot to rock forms or sets of stones. I also use a lot of stone in the making of my enamels, but also ashes that I recover from chimneys and stoves, and schist stone from Lozère, in the village where I grew up, not far from a river."
Emergences Biennial
Center national de la danse
1, rue Victor-Hugo, Pantin
April 10 to 13, 2025
