Mathieu Lehanneur © Maison&Objet

He is the designer of the torch Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. He also bears the coveted title of designer of the year awarded by the Maison&Objet show. The year 2024 is indeed a consecration for Mathieu Lehanneur, creator at the crossroads of art, design, technology, lover of side steps. Born in Rochefort in 1974 in a family of seven brothers and sisters, the one who was appointed more than ten years ago to head the Huawei research center, the Chinese consumer technology giant also knows how to serve large causes, for example by creating a fun device (an interactive pillbox) improving the ergonomics of medications or even an air filtering system using plants to help fight pollution. A design for comfort, well-being, care. Several of his creations are part of the collections of Moma, in New York. Recently installed with his teams and his tools in Ivry-Sur-Seine, in a building formerly occupied by EDF and renamed his “Factory”, Mathieu Lehanneur also recently inaugurated in Manhattan, where he maintains a network of passionate collectors, his new gallery, in a space perched high above Central Park. Reversing the balance of power, opening horizons, reinventing codes, celebrating the living, reinventing our relationship with objects, the intentions of its design seem to respond exactly to our needs of the time.

Neo Rauch

Born in the former East Germany in 1960, the artist Neo Rauch composes paintings featuring characters, nature and objects that appear normal. But when you look a little closer, nothing is absolutely normal in his paintings, as much the perspective games as the scale games, or even what is happening. We are witnessing a sort of opening towards an unconscious and a world of dreams. The outdoor scenes summon absolutely intimate and unconscious things. Neo Rauch has created an enigmatic and strange work that has earned him international success today. The Mo.Co. in Montpellier devoted a retrospective to him last summer, the first in France despite his celebrity. We see that surrealism inspired him, but he was also inspired by the communist imagery of the time. I find in his work a bottomless well of inspiration towards the unconscious and a concentrate of humanity at all levels. There is also a certain violence. We feel things that are about to happen, things that appear, never in catastrophe, but always at the tipping point. I also see an allegory of access to information: this telescoping of information in real time forming successions of layers in our minds. In Neo Rauch's painting we feel this capacity to superimpose all these layers, things that have nothing to do with each other and that were not supposed to meet. In his painting what happens in all our minds occurs, where everything telescopes without us necessarily being able to find meaning in it. A mix of fear, excitement, the familiar with the strange, things that are linked to dreams and to a pure reality that is not always bucolic.

Yellow

Named designer of the year Maison&Objet, I created a monochrome yellow installation. Yellow is an intense and vibrant color that expresses radiance and an elsewhere to which we would like to escape. It also has an artificial dimension. In this world where we are more certain to be fascinated by the artificial (in reference to artificial materials, petrochemicals and chemistry in general), this notion of artificial nowadays refers more to the solar and to what provides energy. A color that is strong today and makes me vibrate. This installation, which was exhibited in mid-January at Maison&Objet, is called "Outonomy". It deals with survivalism, this movement asking the question of a way of living or surviving a collapse whether it be ecological, geopolitical, economic... Survivalism exists at very different points of the globe, culturally different, and takes different forms. For example, there is this paranoid way in the United States of building reserves, building bunkers and equipping themselves with weapons. But there is, in other places on the planet, a more poetic, gentler survivalism. This installation feeds and is inspired by this survivalist approach by asking us: if I had to reinvent myself elsewhere, what would I take? What am I willing to give up? Concretely, we see a basic dwelling powered by a domestic wind turbine energy production system. A helium drone, to consume as little energy as possible, also ensures a minimum of security. There is also something to eat, to do sports... In short, a kind of survival kit where everything is absolutely yellow, an energizing, vibrant yellow, can be frightening, both hopeful but not devoid of a post-apocalyptic side. We are in a proposal that assumes its fictional side, and that will ask each visitor the question: "are you ready?" I don't know if I'm ready yet, but the idea is making its way.

Volleyball

We consume tennis, football, rugby all the time… But there is a sport that no one cares about, even though it is perhaps the most beautiful: volleyball. I have made it my mission to defend it. This sport has missed out on much of what it deserves. It is a collective discipline, touched by grace, both very physical and where no one really touches each other, spectacular in short. I challenge you to name me a volleyball player on the French team! I have decided today to improvise as an ambassador for volleyball in France. I played it when I was 15.

Richard Buckminster Fuller

Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895 – 1983) is a figure who is increasingly important to me. This American architect was also a thinker, engineer, philosopher, and sometimes a designer. He created from the 1967s to the XNUMXs, ending up as a professor. An important figure for me because he never really chose a discipline. He chose instead to participate in the world in which he lived. He is known, for example, for having invented these geodesic domes, constructions made of dome or iron, one of which exists in Montreal ("the Biosphere" built at the time of the XNUMX World's Fair). An architecture adopted paradoxically both by hippies, as shelters lost in the middle of nowhere, and by the American army which used them as bases. He also created objects, like these maps of the globe offering another representation of the world through their shape. His question was never "where and how does such and such a discipline stop?" But rather how to react to everything that was happening around him. A free and more than fertile mind. Few figures are capable of moving to this point from a small technical object to an important architectural object, to a film, to a mass-produced object, to a way of teaching science and technology… In history, there are few minds with this capacity to embrace issues that are as much technical as scientific or societal.

The escalator

One object that I love above all is the escalator. We use it almost every day. It is an aesthetically beautiful and absolutely fascinating object except when designers try to redesign it, which is not always successful. For me, it is the missing link between pure poetry and the most accomplished function. I have often wondered by what twisted and brilliant mind was born the idea of ​​setting in motion the object that by definition is the most static there is. We have known the staircase since the dawn of time, this architectural object that is made for everything except moving. Except that at one point, a human had the idea of ​​setting it in motion. The escalator could be a sculpture, a surrealist delirium, pure poetry, but it is absolutely functional. I discovered that the first patent filing for escalators dates back to the end of the 19th century. It was created for amusement parks in the United States. It is therefore not intended to be a functional object: it was first and foremost a fairground attraction. People were offered the opportunity to sit astride an escalator railing that would take them to the top, like a merry-go-round. This object, considered utilitarian, therefore initially came from entertainment. This is probably what gives it this spectacular and useful side. It has the same status as the umbrella. A poetic, marvelous, surrealist, and totally functional object.

White noise

I am a regular listener of a particular music called white noise. A sound formed from all the frequencies that the human ear can hear. It sounds like a "pshhhhh"... It is used by acousticians for its technical specificities, for example to break in speakers. But it is a sound that also has the capacity to considerably rest our brain. While it is not aesthetic, nor particularly melodious, it is the most comfortable sound. It does not produce anything salient, on the contrary, and will put all the other surrounding sounds in the background. It is a sound that soothes. It produces the same effect, for example, as the sound of a waterfall. I downloaded some on my phone and I regularly give myself little shots of white noise.

Loris Gréaud

Loris Gréaud is a contemporary artist that I like a lot. He recently invaded the Petit Palais in Paris for an exhibition, "Les Nuits Corticales", but almost without touching the monument. He made the Petit Palais vibrate, so to speak, with very few material elements. There were barely visible olfactory devices, placed against the walls, almost like air conditioning units, which stimulated certain parts of our brain. You have to imagine yourself in a large empty space, forcing yourself to connect to stimuli other than the visual stimulus. In the garden of the Petit Palais, he proposed a sound journey: traveling 40 km across all the points of the globe, but in an absolutely motionless way, only by listening to a sound landscape formed by soundtracks from explorers' journeys broadcast in the garden. You could also go in search of a blob, this organism of which we don't really know whether it is absolutely animal, vegetable or bacteriological. A way for Loris Gréaud to speak and storm, if I may say so, this institution that is the Petit Palais, but in the most implicit way possible. And which leaves each visitor space. No invitation was made to admire his talent or his intelligence, which are nevertheless there, but to offer the minimal support - but oh so effective and efficient - in order to participate actively in the installation.