Breath of an Architect by Bijoy Jain / Studio Mumbai with Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye and Hu Liu
07/04/2024.
Fondation Cartier [Paris] France
metalocus, JORGE MARTINEZ
metalocus, JORGE MARTINEZ
The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain presented Breath of an Architect, an exhibition created especially for the foundation by architect Bijoy Jain, founder of Studio Mumbai in India, in collaboration with artists Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye and Hu Liu. The exhibition will be available from December 9, 2023 to April 21, 2024 in Paris, France.
The exhibition reflects a deep concern for the relationship between man and nature, in which time and gesture are essential factors. Exploring the links between art, architecture and material, Bijoy Jain offers at the Fondation Cartier a space for dreaming and contemplation in dialogue with Jean Nouvel's iconic building.
"As an architect, it is about the consideration one gives to the creation of things, about being immersed and attentive to the environment, the materials and its inhabitants, about the possibility of space and architecture being inclusive."
The exhibition reflects a deep concern for the relationship between man and nature, in which time and gesture are essential factors. Exploring the links between art, architecture and material, Bijoy Jain offers at the Fondation Cartier a space for dreaming and contemplation in dialogue with Jean Nouvel's iconic building.
"As an architect, it is about the consideration one gives to the creation of things, about being immersed and attentive to the environment, the materials and its inhabitants, about the possibility of space and architecture being inclusive."
Bijoy Jain.
Painted Karvi panel in three parts, line drawing on a woven bamboo mat covered with cow dung, traced with coton thread with orange ferrous oxide pigment. Photograph by Ashish Shah.
Exhibition view of Breath of an Architect showing Prima Materia surrounded with various structural elements and seats made out of stone, asphalt and tar.
Bijoy Jain / Studio Mumbai Breath of an Architect. Photograph by Marc Domage.
Bijoy Jain / Studio Mumbai Breath of an Architect. Photograph by Marc Domage.
Bijoy Jain / Studio Mumbai Breath of an Architect. Photograph by Marc Domage.
Exhibition view of Breath of an Architect with Kalyani Abstract Water Drawing in red cadmium pigment drawn with coated thread on a chalk structure sourced in Île-de-France.
Bijoy Jain / Studio Mumbai Breath of an Architect. Photograph by Marc Domage.
Bijoy Jain / Studio Mumbai Breath of an Architect. Photograph by Marc Domage.
Bijoy Jain / Studio Mumbai Breath of an Architect. Photograph by Marc Domage.
Bijoy Jain / Studio Mumbai Breath of an Architect. Photograph by Marc Domage.
Bijoy Jain / Studio Mumbai Breath of an Architect. Photograph by Marc Domage.
Makaloo’s Dome, made from a bamboo structure, covered with cowhide and lime / Mandala Study, 2023, bird shaped geometric frame of bamboo tied with nistari silk / Lime and red cinnabar/ cochineal pigment drawn with silk on granite bench. Photograph by Ashish Shah.
Tazia frame structure built from hand-cut bamboo strips tied with silk string and partially covered with gold leaf in the garden of Fondation Cartier.
View from the Studio Mumbai, Saat Rasta Houses, Mumbai, India. Photograph by Iwan Baan.
View from the Studio Mumbai, Saat Rasta Houses, Mumbai, India. Photograph by Iwan Baan.
Portrait of Bijoy Jain. Photograph by Neville Sukhia.
Breath of an Architect, an exhibition created by Bijoy Jain that has been built from the idea of generating a physical and emotional experience. The exhibition is an invitation to breathe, to wander in stillness and rediscover silence, which is achieved through the use of light and shadow, the tonality and texture of the materials, and thus a sensory experience is generated in resonance with the materials. .
Made to the rhythm of breathing and molded by hand, the exhibition installation is composed of architectural fragments, which summon light and shadow, clarity and gravity, with materials such as wood, brick, earth, stone and water . This sensory need is not a characteristic prioritized only by the architect, but also by the two invited artists, the Chinese painter living in Beijing, Hu Liu, and the Danish ceramicist of Turkish origin living in Paris, Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye.
Makaloo’s Dome, made from a bamboo structure, covered with cowhide and lime / Mandala Study, 2023, bird shaped geometric frame of bamboo tied with nistari silk / Lime and red cinnabar/ cochineal pigment drawn with silk on granite bench. Photograph by Ashish Shah.
"Silence has a sound, we hear its resonance in ourselves. This sound connects all living beings, it is the breath of life. It is synchronous in all of us. Silence, time and space are eternal, as are water, air and light, our elemental construction. This abundance of sensory phenomena, dreams, memory, imagination, emotions and intuition arise from this set of experiences, embedded in the corners of our eyes, in the soles of our feet, in the lobes of our ears, in the timbre of our voice. , in the whisper of our breath and in the palm of our hand".
Stone and terracotta sculptures, facades of traditional Indian houses, rendered panels, lines of pigment drawn with thread, bamboo structures inspired by tazias (funerary monuments carried on the shoulders in memory of a saint during Shia Muslim processions), these transitional structures and ephemera present a world that is both infinite and intimate, transporting us to places near and far.
Bijoy Jain / Studio Mumbai Breath of an Architect. Photograph by Marc Domage.
All three give equal importance to the ritual mastery of the gesture, the resonance and the dialogue with the matter; They share the same spirit and sensitivity. Hu Liu's monochrome black drawings are created with graphite, repeating iterations of the same movement to reveal the essence of natural elements: grass caressed by the wind, the movement of waves or the silhouette of tree branches, conveying a timeless solemnity. Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye's ceramics are also the culmination of great skill and dexterity, as well as an intense dialogue with clay, and weightlessness in the experience of working with it.
For Bijoy Jain, our physical world is a palimpsest of our cultural evolution. Humanity moves through a constantly evolving landscape, whose successive writings intertwine. In Breath of an Architect, we are offered a glimpse, however fleeting, of the sensory emanations of architecture, the intuitive forces that bind us to the elements, and our emotional relationship with space.
More information
Authors
Bijoy Jain / Studio Mumbai, Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye, Hu Liu.
Currators
Hervé Chandès.- Fondation Cartier’s artistic managing director.
Juliette Lecorne.- curator at the Fondation Cartier.
Juliette Lecorne.- curator at the Fondation Cartier.
Dates
December 9, 2023, to April 21, 2024.
Location
1261, Boulevard Raspail 75014 Paris, France.
Photography
Bijoy Jain Studio Mumbai
Studio Mumbai, works with a human infrastructure of skilled artisans, technicians and draftsmen who design and build the work directly. This group shares an environment created from an iterative process, where ideas are explored through the production of large-scale mock-ups, models, material studies, sketches and drawings.
Projects are developed through careful consideration of place and practice that draws from traditional skills, local building techniques, materials and an ingenuity arising from limited resources. The Studio has designed the 2016 edition of Melbourne’s MPavilion, an annual commission touted as Australia’s answer to London’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, and is having projects in India, Japan, Switzerland and South of France.
Bijoy Jain was born in Mumbai, India in 1965 and received his M. Arch from Washington University in St Louis, USA in 1990. He worked with Richard Meier in Los Angeles and London between 1989 and 1995 before returning to India in 1995 to found his practice. a He has taught in Copenhagen, Yale and Mendrisio.
Exhibitions include those held at the Venice Biennale (2010, 2012 and 2016), Between the Sun and the Moon: a major monographic touring exhibition at Arc en Rêve, Centre d’Architecture Bordeaux, FR (2015), DAM Frankfurt, DE (2016) and DAC Copenhagen, DK (2016); Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal, Canada (2014), Sharjah Biennial (2013), 1:1 Architects Build Small Spaces, Victoria & Albert Museum (2010).
Awards include the Global Award in Sustainable Architecture (2009), finalist for the 11th cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (2010), winner of the seventh Spirit of Nature Wood Architecture Award, Finland (2012), winner of the third BSI Swiss Architecture Award (2012), most recently winner of the Grande Medaille d’Or from the Academie D’Architecture, Paris, France (2014), and the University of Hasselt, Belgium bestowed an honorary doctorate on Bijoy Jain in 2014.
Projects are developed through careful consideration of place and practice that draws from traditional skills, local building techniques, materials and an ingenuity arising from limited resources. The Studio has designed the 2016 edition of Melbourne’s MPavilion, an annual commission touted as Australia’s answer to London’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, and is having projects in India, Japan, Switzerland and South of France.
Bijoy Jain was born in Mumbai, India in 1965 and received his M. Arch from Washington University in St Louis, USA in 1990. He worked with Richard Meier in Los Angeles and London between 1989 and 1995 before returning to India in 1995 to found his practice. a He has taught in Copenhagen, Yale and Mendrisio.
Exhibitions include those held at the Venice Biennale (2010, 2012 and 2016), Between the Sun and the Moon: a major monographic touring exhibition at Arc en Rêve, Centre d’Architecture Bordeaux, FR (2015), DAM Frankfurt, DE (2016) and DAC Copenhagen, DK (2016); Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal, Canada (2014), Sharjah Biennial (2013), 1:1 Architects Build Small Spaces, Victoria & Albert Museum (2010).
Awards include the Global Award in Sustainable Architecture (2009), finalist for the 11th cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (2010), winner of the seventh Spirit of Nature Wood Architecture Award, Finland (2012), winner of the third BSI Swiss Architecture Award (2012), most recently winner of the Grande Medaille d’Or from the Academie D’Architecture, Paris, France (2014), and the University of Hasselt, Belgium bestowed an honorary doctorate on Bijoy Jain in 2014.
Hu Liu
Hu Liu is a painter born in 1982 in Xinyang, Henan Province, China.
Hu Liu's monochromatic black drawings are created with graphite, repeating iterations of the same movement, line by line, to reveal the essence of natural elements: grass caressed by the wind, the sway of waves or the silhouette of branches from a tree.
Although the entire surface of each drawing is covered and may appear monochromatic, her works are not black: they are, according to the artist, xuan. The word can mean "dark" or "mysterious" and evokes the philosophy of Laozi and Zhuangzi, who encourage carefree wandering, "inaction" (無為, wúwéi), natural spontaneity based on stillness and the absence of thought. «The spatial and temporal changes caused by the growth of a life form are wonderful and magical, like the creation of a work of art; They are all driven by the forces generated by the primitive power of life. A drawing inscribed directly on the ground evokes the Wagh Bakri, the game of the tiger and the goat, and invites visitors to become participants just by their presence.
The Cartier Foundation presented Hu Liu's works at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai, on the occasion of the exhibition Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, A Beautiful Elsewhere (2018) and Trees (2021), as well as at the Milan Triennale on the occasion of the Mondo Reale exhibition (2022).
Hu Liu's monochromatic black drawings are created with graphite, repeating iterations of the same movement, line by line, to reveal the essence of natural elements: grass caressed by the wind, the sway of waves or the silhouette of branches from a tree.
Although the entire surface of each drawing is covered and may appear monochromatic, her works are not black: they are, according to the artist, xuan. The word can mean "dark" or "mysterious" and evokes the philosophy of Laozi and Zhuangzi, who encourage carefree wandering, "inaction" (無為, wúwéi), natural spontaneity based on stillness and the absence of thought. «The spatial and temporal changes caused by the growth of a life form are wonderful and magical, like the creation of a work of art; They are all driven by the forces generated by the primitive power of life. A drawing inscribed directly on the ground evokes the Wagh Bakri, the game of the tiger and the goat, and invites visitors to become participants just by their presence.
The Cartier Foundation presented Hu Liu's works at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai, on the occasion of the exhibition Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, A Beautiful Elsewhere (2018) and Trees (2021), as well as at the Milan Triennale on the occasion of the Mondo Reale exhibition (2022).
Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye
Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye is a ceramist born in 1938 in Istanbul, Turkey, but who has lived since 1987 in Paris, France.
Over the years, Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye has perfected an intense dialogue with matter, through the ritual mastery of gesture. Rigor, repetition and patience are marks of quality of this artist, who from the beginning found inspiration in the cultures of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Anatolia. In this dialogue with clay, the artist highlights the importance of water as a basis for the construction of land, as well as in architecture.
Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye's ceramics are curvilinear bowls, with thin walls and wide rims that invite the viewer to contemplate the silence of the space inside. Embodying a certain latency, each bowl demonstrates a paradoxical stance, between grounded balance and ethereal ascension.
Its sensual elegance causes a feeling of weightlessness.
The Cartier Foundation presented the works of Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye on the occasion of the Mondo Reale exhibition at the 2022 Milan Triennale.
Over the years, Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye has perfected an intense dialogue with matter, through the ritual mastery of gesture. Rigor, repetition and patience are marks of quality of this artist, who from the beginning found inspiration in the cultures of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Anatolia. In this dialogue with clay, the artist highlights the importance of water as a basis for the construction of land, as well as in architecture.
Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye's ceramics are curvilinear bowls, with thin walls and wide rims that invite the viewer to contemplate the silence of the space inside. Embodying a certain latency, each bowl demonstrates a paradoxical stance, between grounded balance and ethereal ascension.
Its sensual elegance causes a feeling of weightlessness.
The Cartier Foundation presented the works of Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye on the occasion of the Mondo Reale exhibition at the 2022 Milan Triennale.
Categories
Our selection
