Behind the red doors of Hubert Le Gall’s atelier in Montmartre, the boundary between reality and imagination begins to blur. Nestled within the historic Cité des Fusains and once occupied by the French painter Pierre Bonnard, the studio carries with it the layered legacy of Montmartre’s artistic past. Beyond the courtyard and ivy-covered walls lie bronze animals, gilded flowers, sculptural lamps, and works-in-progress. It feels less like a conventional studio than a living cabinet of curiosities, where each object carries its own sense of character, humour, and possibility.
Inspired by figures such as Salvador Dalí, Jean Cocteau, and the Surrealists, Le Gall transforms familiar domestic forms into sculptural objects that feel at once elegant, playful, and slightly uncanny. In his atelier, cabinets bloom into flowers, mirrors resemble falling raindrops, lamps take on animal forms, and consoles seem to emerge from scenes half-remembered from childhood stories. The works resist easy categorisation: neither entirely furniture nor entirely sculpture, they occupy a space between decorative object and theatrical artistic gesture.
Yet beneath the humour and fantasy lies an unwavering attention to craftsmanship. Never working with established furniture manufacturers, Le Gall eschews mass production intrinsic to the design industry. The artist favours producing objects in extremely limited series that echo the craft traditions of yesteryear, while maintaining a hands-on approach in their manufacturing. The atelier is also far from a one-man operation: Le Gall works closely with a small trusted team in the studio while regularly calling upon the expertise of skilled French artisans, fostering an environment of constant collaboration and dialogue around technique, materials, and fabrication. What emerges from this process is work that conceals its own complexity; objects whose technical difficulty is resolved into forms that appear effortless, playful, and instinctive.
As Le Gall prepares for his first monographic exhibition with Cuturi Gallery Paris, Arbres de la forêt, vous connaissez notre âme, opening on 28 May, the atelier offers a glimpse into the singular world from which these works emerge. Unfolding through a poetic and symbolic landscape inhabited by forests, animals, and imagined presences drawn from Le Gall’s distinctive visual language, this new body of work reflects the very spirit of the atelier itself: a place where functional objects are transformed into narrative forms, and where craftsmanship, imagination, and storytelling remain deeply intertwined.
2026年5月19日
相关艺术家
1
/ 59