Unintended Beauty
Protographs by Alastair Philip Wiper
The exhibition Unintended Beauty is a photographic exploration inside production sites around the world (adidas, Bang & Olufsen, Boeing, CERN, Kvadrat, Playmobil, etc.). The project offers a rare insight into places of work that are normally kept behind closed doors and reveals the hidden beauty and the incredible complexity of these infrastructures.
Machines that smash atoms together, make fabrics or produce medicines, all result from human collaborative imagination and tell us about who we are: our needs, desires, madness and our vision of the future. The sustainability of this future depends on our ability to create and innovate. This exponential creativity associated with cutting-edge technology strongly contributes to our well-being and at the same time constitutes a threat to life on earth.
These aesthetically fascinating images question the human being and his complex relationship to the machine. The exhibition offers an ethical reflection on production methods, which remains one of the key issues for design.
In parallel with the exhibition Playground - The Design of Sneakers (18 June 2020 - 10 January 2021) where Wiper’s photographs of the adidas production sites in Bavaria and Indonesia are shown, Unintended Beauty opens on June 18 at the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in Bordeaux.
Alastair Philip Wiper
British photographer Alastair Philip Wiper (Hamburg, 1980) is known for his unique ability to portray subjects of industry, science and architecture. Through a profound fascination with lines and symmetry, colour and contrast, Alastair masterfully captures the beauty of imperfection. Besides working regularly for magazines such as Wired, Scientific American, Wallpaper, The Guardian and Vice, Alastair has received great admiration and international acknowledgement for his series on Silicon Valley (Silicon Nights) and his book about Bang & Olufsen “The Art of Impossible”.
Meeting online with Alastair Philip Wiper : Thursday 18 June on Instagram
Practical informations
Press kit and visitor's guide available on request from documentation.madd@mairie-bordeaux.fr
Production sites
adidas, CERN, Pernod Ricard, Boeing, European Space Agency, Playmobil, Bang & Olufsen, Technical University of Denmark, Danish Crown, Ørsted, Arla, Kvadrat, Lundbeck, Maersk, Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Steinway, Niederegger, Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, S.N.S. Herning, Mykita, Harry’s, Jodrell Bank, Hasselblad, etc.
The catalogue Unintended Beauty (published in Spring 2020)
250 x 320 mm – 208 pages – 90 illustrations
Graphic design by IRONFLAG
Published by Hatje Cantz
On sale on Alastair Philip Wiper’s website
The museum wants to thank
Château Haut-Bailly,
mécène d’honneur
Kvadrat
The Danish Arts Foundation
For their fidelity, the museum would also like to thank
Les Amis et le Cercle du MADD Bordeaux
Château Nairac
Farrow & Ball
Les Crus Bourgeois du Médoc
Les Galeries Lafayette
La société de négoce DIVA
Samsung