Felipe Ribon, corps subtils
A carte blanche given to Felipe Ribon
From August the 5th until November the 2nd 2015, the Museum of Decorative arts and Design in Bordeaux will be holding an exhibition of the work of Felipe Ribon, who is being given carte blanche to use the premises of the Lalande’s town house. The designer devises an immersive circuit in the heart of the collections, inspired by the surprising history of the place and those who have lived in it, since the end of the 18th century.
Two of his latest projects will engage in a dialogue: Mind the Gap and ae – objets médium, the outcome of the way he challenges our relation to things perceptible.
After studying engineering at the Ecole des Mines in Nantes, Felipe Ribon attended the Ecole nationale supérieure de creation industrielle [ENSCI – Les Ateliers], he graduated in 2008.
He embarked on his professional career in the Bouroullec studio, which he left in 2012 for a residency at the Villa Médicis in Rome. It was there that he developed his work on objects as medium, in the wake of his Mind the Gap project.
The aim of Mind the Gap, which was developed and produced in 2012 with the backing of the Audi Talents Awards, of which he is himself a recipient, is to put hypnosis within reach of one and all. Widely used in therapeutic circles, and today at last practiced in hospitals, hypnosis is also a guarantee of well-being; it involves a necessary and natural process which we have nevertheless learnt to shun in favour of productivity but at the expense of our own equilibrium.
Felipe Ribon designs wood, carpets, tables and other items of furniture to encourage the hypnotic trance.
In devising new areas for design, Felipe Ribon sidesteps the boundaries set up by Cartesian rationalism, while still remaining faithful to the demands of his discipline. ae – objets médium is thus a series of objects whose main function is to facilitate contact with what lies beyond. With revolving tables, automatic writing tablets, and talking boards, Felipe Ribon enriches a vocabulary of objects which has remained unchanged since the 19th century, a climactic moment for spiritualism. We are in fact acquainted with Victor Hugo’s notebooks compiled in the Book of Tables, describing spiritualist séances organized on the Island of Jersey, and with the Memoirs of Thomas Edison, in which he writes that he is dreaming of “providing spiritualist researchers with an apparatus which might enable them to work in a strictly scientific way”.
Felipe Ribon’s refusal of conceptual restrictions, his re-questioning of preconceived ideas, and his suspicion of everything that seems obvious are key factors in the approach of this young FrancoColombian artist, nourished by a multiculturalism which forces him to readily adopt surprising and unusual viewpoints. He challenges the possibility of using new areas and shedding rules.
Constance Rubini, Director of the Museum of Decorative arts and Design, met Felipe Ribon in 2009 at the Villa Noailles. She immediately expressed her enthusiasm for his innovative project of a bathroom using technical fabrics instead of ceramics (Another Bathroom) and has been keeping an eye on his work ever since.
In 2010, when she was the general curator of the Saint-Etienne Biennale, she invited him to come up with an exhibition which would usher in an intuitive and experimental approach to contemporary light. A subject which echoed his work as a photographer and the quintessential role he earmarks for light in the revelation of existing things. In 2012, Constance Rubini was a member of the jury which gave him the Audi Talent Awards in the Design section.
Together with the goldsmith Nicolas Marischaël, Felipe Ribon has just won the 16th Prix Liliane Bettencourt pour l’intelligence de la main, for their work Osmos.
Opening : Thursday, September 10, 2015 at 18:30
Practical information: Opening hours, prices, guided tour
#madd_bordeaux
AROUND THE EXHIBITION
Les Vitrines sur l’Art : du 2 au 29 juillet 2015
Le musée des Arts décoratifs et du Design de Bordeaux présente les travaux récents de Felipe Ribon pour les Vitrines sur l’art aux Galeries Lafayette, rue Porte Dijeaux à Bordeaux.
Tous les jours, accès libre.
Vernissage et présentation de l’exposition par Felipe Ribon : 10 septembre 2015 à 18h30
À cette occasion, le madd-bordeaux reçoit le docteur Fabrice Lakdja, créateur du diplôme universitaire d’hypnose médicale de Bordeaux, pour une conversation autour des états hypnotiques. #JeudisduDesign
Soirée Fantasma : jeudi 17 septembre à 18h30
Felipe Ribon et Ryoko Sekiguchi, auteure, présenteront le projet Dîner Fantasma, réalisé pendant leur séjour à la villa Medicis en 2014. Un dispositif curieux, destiné à accueillir dignement quelques invités particuliers, des fantômes. #JeudisduDesign
Plein tarif : 8 € / 5 € pour les Amis du musée
Gratuit pour les étudiants
Viens t’amuser au musée : mercredi 14 octobre de 14h30 à 16h
Felipe Ribon, un design pour rêver
Visite et atelier pour enfants de 6 à 11 ans.
Tarif : 5 €
Curator of the exhibition
Constance Rubini, director of the musée des Arts décoratifs et du Design
Thank you :
Château Haut-Bailly,
Mécène d’honneur
Fraysse & Associés, partenaire fidèle
Les Amis de l’hôtel de Lalande
Habitat au Village du Meuble à Mérignac
Air France
Le Chapon Fin
Château de Launay
Château Nairac
Grand Hôtel de Bordeaux & Spa
Samsung
Les Crus Bourgeois du Médoc
Station Ausone