Nicolas Le Moigne: A Play with Material

(adam štěch) New Paris-based gallery Next Level hosts its second exhibition of design. This time, the gallery presents a brand new collection from the talented young French designer Nicolas Le Moigne.

After the solo exhibition of Philippe Malouin, which we have written about, another young designer now exhibits in the gallery. His conceptual approach to design consists, as is the case with Malouin, in a pure primarily material form. From these two exhibitions, we can thus deduce the creative focus of this new gallery, which discovers lesser known designers whose conceptual work remains within the confines of classical forms and functions and, thus, does not become a mere gallery object, as can be observed in the case of several contemporary “artists-designers.” As some of these designer objects become totally unaesthetic, the new Materia collection by Le Moigne, on the contrary, strives to achieve an entirely beautiful aesthetical design. The combination of various materials in the form of pure and simple objects – this is the main theme of the Materia collection, which proves the designer’s background at the Swiss ECAL, which is also the case of the remaining parts of Le Moigne’s work. Wood, glass, metal, porcelain, cork, and velvet start to play a varicolored material symphony through a series of visually delicate objects. Thus, the exhibition functions as a sort of summary of the existing work by Nicolas Le Moigne, who always attributes a fundamental role to the material. With both the eternit Slip stool designed for the London-based gallery Libby Sellers and the fibreglass Monocoque lamp designed for the Ormond Gallery in Geneva, the designer sought to utilize the material in the most interesting formal and artistic way possible.

The three Vesta tables of various sizes combine light birch wood on the base with white varnished aluminum sheet of the table top that is consoled. On the whole, the tables are reminiscent of household micro architecture. The Narcis coaster is an oblong object made from mirror steel - the bottom side is covered with velvet and equipped with a birch base. The Flore collection of two vases combines blown glass with glazed porcelain. Design that is reminiscent of the work of another ECAL student – Tomáš Král from Slovakia, whose designs visitors could see at last year’s Designblok – gives a very fresh, light, and naturally beautiful impression. At first sight, Gaia is an ordinary plate. However, its bottom part is irregularly creased and, thus, creates an inconspicuous biological structure similar to cabbage.

The Materia collection does not seek to achieve revolutionary formal or ideal innovations but, in the designer’s words, small inconspicuous functional and aesthetical shifts that enrich everyday life.

The author is a Dolce Vita editor.

< back