Until April 15, 2023, the exhibition "Nothing Escapes the Light" at the Bigaignon gallery brings together Odile Mir, Thomas Paquet and Léonie Alma Mason for a unique dialogue combining architecture, contemporary art and the photographic medium with reflections on design.
In 1993, French sculptor and designer Odile Mir designed The Solar Ship. Located near Avignon, in the commune of Tavier in the Gard department, The Solar Ship is a monumental work placed in a public space and quickly became a mysterious and iconic monument, visited by thousands of tourists each year. A product of the artist's imagination (who was collaborating at the time with astronomer Denis Savoie), this remarkable work of art became the largest sundial in the world. Like the faces of a modern pyramid, its immense white concrete sails measure up to 17 meters high, and the shadows cast by the sun and moon indicate the time to passersby.
To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of The Solar Ship, Léonie Alma Mason, architect and granddaughter of Odile Mir – they co-founded LOMM Editions to republish Odile Mir's work – revisits The Solar Ship by Thomas Paquet, connecting to the rich intergenerational dialogue she develops with her grandmother. The meeting between the three creators was clear and resulted in a very rich work. Questioning the notions of space, light and time, Thomas Paquet will find his alter ego in Odile Mir and soon the two artists begin their work. Sometimes inspired by la Nef itself, whose constituent elements are the trajectory of the sun and the measurement of time, sometimes through his poetry, Thomas Paquet will then create a series of photosensitive works and imagine four-handed works with the artist 50 years his senior.
But the exhibition, which opened on March 9, doesn't stop there, far from it! When Léonie Alma Mason offered Thomas Paquet a reissue of furniture created by her grandmother in the 1970s, they decided, in a reflection between contemporary art and design, to reinterpret the armchair FILO maxi by Odile Mir (in numbered chrome and VVN leather). Thomas Paquet repurposed the natural leather of these armchairs into a photosensitive surface, exposing them to the sun according to precise protocols, allowing Léonie Alma Mason to create three new and unique versions of this famous armchair.
Revolving around light and time, an inexhaustible source of inspiration, and the purity of geometric forms that prevail in Odile Mir's work The Solar Ship, as in the furniture of Editions LOMM, various pieces draw on multiple techniques, dear to the artist of the Bigaignon gallery, from photogram to cutouts, including engraving, silver prints or even cyanotype! An object book that places the reader and the sun at the heart of the creative process completes the exhibition layout, allowing everyone to leave with a unique piece. An exhibition of exquisite poetry, highlighting a rich and unique artistic dialogue!
About Thomas Paquet
French-Canadian artist Thomas Paquet, born in 1979, questions the nature of time, its structure of uninterrupted flow, and the dynamics of its movement. Over the years, in an architectural game that stages the sensory experience of the world, Thomas Paquet has conducted photographic research around its fundamental characteristics: light, space, and time. His photographic approach is direct and practical. Experimentation is often at the heart of his research, and for each of his projects, a specific device is developed, whether optical, physical, or chemical. The works produced in this way, between premeditation and chance, take on a plastic dimension that operates within the possibilities and constraints of the photographic document. They invite us to go beyond representations of reality, blurring the boundaries between science and poetry, materiality and abstraction, objectivity and subjectivity. Represented by Galerie Bigaignon, his work has been the subject of several solo exhibitions and has been featured in various fairs and exhibitions such as Paris Photo and Approche. He is also a finalist of the Swiss Life à 4 Mains and BMW Art Makers 2022. Thomas lives and works in Paris.
About Odile Mir
Born in Toulouse in 1926, Odile Mir trained at the Beaux-Arts in Casablanca and, from 1958, developed an artistic language composed of sculptural pieces in metal, covered with leather and paper, like a second skin, exploring in particular the theme of the female body. In 1968, the artist's work " The woman who broke the mirror » entered the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris and thus achieved great recognition. In 1970, while modernism was in full swing, Odile Mir developed her first furniture prototypes at the Delmas lighting factory in Montauban. There she made lamps and her own furniture, with the aim of producing simple, durable and efficient objects whose use provided freedom and comfort, as intuitively as for her sculptures. Her armchairs, lamps and tables, invented without much thought, entered the Prisunic mail-order catalog (now Monoprix) in 1972, with a now legendary selection including pieces by Gae Aulenti, Marc Held and Olivier Mourgue. In 1993, Odile Mir designed The Solar Ship, a monumental sundial on the road between Orange and Nîmes, which is the origin of the exhibition.
About Léonie Alma Mason
Léonie Alma Mason was born in Geneva in 1987, a child of Europe, between Switzerland, France, and Germany, art, and culture. She graduated with honors from the École Camondo and founded LA.M Studio in 2014. The Paris-based interior architecture and design firm has designed various projects in France and Europe, ranging from private residential projects to public spaces such as hotels, spas, restaurants, and even exhibition scenography within art galleries. Her love of travel, her strong curiosity for photography and contemporary art, and her extensive contact list of artisans allow her to pay careful attention to detail to offer us inhabited, elegant, and welcoming living spaces. In 2021, she launched LOMM Editions with her grandmother, artist and sculptor Odile Mir, with the aim of publishing or reissuing her grandmother's creations, some of which are now part of the history of French design and the years that can be called "Prisunic". In addition to a monographic work entitled Odile Mir, Œuvres, I. Design, LOMM presents its first collection composed of models from the family FILO from 1971. Armchair, pouf, magazine rack and DUO floor lamp, nothing has aged.
About Bigaignon
Bigaignon is specifically a photosensitive contemporary art gallery. The gallery's line is rooted in avant-garde movements such as Light & Space, minimalism, abstract art, figurative photography and constructivism, and is based on the firm conviction that photography, particularly nourished by these trends, has completely entered a new era. Dedicated to the promotion of artists who use the fundamental elements of photography such as light and time, the gallery contributes to the development of a new avant-garde art, whatever the final medium. As such, it highlights the international programs presented by the artists it represents and supports, whether emerging, developing or internationally recognized, and who take hold of the photographic medium to explore its scope in a unique writing. Located in the Marais district of Paris (18 rue du Bourg-Tibourg, Paris 4), the gallery offers visitors, lovers of fine books and collectors, a captivating experience. The gallery is a member of the Comité professionnel des galeries d'art (CPGA).
André Tirlet
