This new series, Design bites, unveil the backstage of contemporary creation. Tackling various topics from personal designer processes to the position of Collectible design on the global design market; these bites offer different views to suit all tastes. Today we talk with Laurence Bonnel from Galerie SCENE OUVERTE.

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COLLECTIBLE: What do you think collectible design brings compared to other more massively produced pieces?

Laurence Bonnel: The collectible design brings a special soul. With a unique piece, or a limited edition, you are sure that you’ll be the only one (or very few) to have this work, so it’s rare and precious. It gives also more fantasy or a more theatrical atmosphere. A place with collectible design gets unique.

“The essential need for a return to manual labor and a more human scale pushed.”

C: Can you talk about the designers you present for COLLECTIBLE SALON? What makes their practice and pieces unique?

LB: Abel Carcamo ‘s work is very organic. From daily observations, gestures or situations that interact in the city, solid structures are generated. Mutare is a series of functional sculptures from the daily imagination of Abel Cárcamo. These creations give life to an UTOPIC CITY. Abel's work is like an infinite imaginary path to the future, which is uncertain, but becomes sure if we have the understanding of what surrounds us. Finally, it is the return to the essential, and the love for making, that constitutes the essence of his work. Thus, "Mutare" is an invitation to question, to remember, to enjoy, and/or to begin again to do what you love, because sometimes, with nothing in your hands, it is possible to create your own world.

Léa Mestres works on the forms of furniture and classical objects, giving them a very particular dimension. Each creation is imbued with a strong joyful personality, giving the feeling that the object is alive. For her, it's all about having fun: having fun through a game of scale and textures, but also giving the spectator the desire to have fun through a unique decor, free of codes. By forbidding herself any restriction, Léa confronts each creation with a challenge that takes her design work to the frontiers of sculpture. Color and textures characterize her work, whether through the Bubble series, where solid and soft are unexpectedly associated or through works made in plaster, which allows her to evolve with absolute freedom in her proposals. Inspired by Niki de Saint Phalle for color and joy, and by Wendell Castle for the powerful asymmetry and tension in the object, Léa builds a world of her own and very unique.

Rino Claessens is an Eindhoven based designer who recently graduated from the Public & Private department at the Design Academy Eindhoven. Ceramics is his material of preference, he is fascinated by its tactile qualities and diverse possibilities. He is interested in the rich history of ceramics but aims to show it in a contemporary way. An experimental and process-based approach leads him to create unconventional objects. The essential need for a return to manual labor and a more human scale pushed 

Céline Salomon to leave architecture to retrain in ceramics. During a two-year stay, between 2016 and 2018, Céline trained with master artisans in the historic and world-renowned Chinese porcelain city of Jingdezhen. Upon her return to France, Céline founded Atelier Zû, a design studio focused on porcelain. In her Parisian studio, Céline Salomon has not cut ties with her former profession. She creates pieces of furniture that explore the register of architecture-nature, inspired in particular by the contour lines of urban plans. Her pieces of furniture become real sculptures, where materials, textures and play of light transform her objects into sensory experiences.

In the past years, Filip Janssens is exploring the use of waste materials like scrap wood, redundant scraps of travertine and marble both for the sustainable character and the real aesthetic qualities. This story began at a stone company where Filip discovered a huge pile of redundant scrap stone like marble and travertine. In theory unusable and destined to be destroyed, Filip took some of them and imagined this lamp. 

The specific design of Lunair brings those imperfections to light. The LED strip embedded in the stone acts like lighting over a painting. Lunair diffuses a soft light like the sun that lights the moon. Lunair lights won a Henry Van De Velde Award in 2020 in the category of design-led crafts.

C: What have you been up to recently? What are the next projects or exhibitions you wish to highlight?

LB: We have a beautiful exhibition of Abel Carcamo (his first in Paris) with some side tables in bronze, in marble and in aluminium, as well as lamps, sculptures and a desk. We also present a rug which is the preparatory drawing of the marble side table, we show them like a reflection, it gives a beautiful point of view of Abel’s work. The second part of the exhibition is Maarten Vrolijk work: glass, ceramics and paintings with a very poetic theme about nature and blossoming inspiration.

Then we’ll have in the second part of June an exhibition named CERAMICS: FURNITURE. We’ll show important functional sculptures in ceramics like mirrors, lamps, benches, tables… from artists like William Coggin, Léa Mestres, Céline Salomon, Rino Claessens, Emma Donnersberg, and also some artworks from Saraï Delfendahl, Marina Le Gall and Valeria Nascimento.

C: What is the relation you hold with the designers you work with?

LB: The relations with our artists are really important. So the first feeling when we meet a new artist is one of the keys. At the gallery, we also like to make some events with all our artists so they can meet each other, discuss and sometimes collaborate. Zoé and I like to think that Gallery SCENE OUVERTE is a team.

About Galerie SCENE OUVERTE (France)

SCENE OUVERTE is a young gallery in the heart of the seventh arrondissement in Paris. Conceived  in the style of a New York loft or a real living space, Laurence Bonnel presents young and established artists who create unique furniture and objects of art in very small editions, with a particular focus on ceramics.