French designer Matali Crasset presents a series of vessels shaped like horns, speaker components and loudhailers at Mica Gallery near Rennes in France.

Each is made of sycamore finished in lacquer and gold leaf.

A performance by sound artist Damien Marchal will accompany the silent objects of the Infrasons collection, which are on show until 25 February 2012.

See all our stories about Matali Crasset here.

Here are some more details from Mica Gallery:

From 18 November 2011 to 25 February 2012, the Mica Gallery is exhibiting a series of objects by Matali CRASSET which have never been seen before. The combination of artisan-designer on which the Mica Gallery is staking as a future promise is therefore continuing with the invitation from this major design centre whose awareness of know-how has already been expressed in a number of collaborative projects.

Bowls, vases, tidies? Shaped like a loudspeaker, loudhailer or a foghorn, these objects mischievously shy away from their status, juggling between use and representation, compelling whoever takes it up to think about what he will do with it, and this is already an invitation to reinvent the world.

Unidentified objects, they play at maintaining a doubt about their function and their origins. They may be the descendants of old musical instruments where we don't know where the sound comes from, as well as the prototypes for high-tech sound equipment that nobody yet knows how to work. This silence is too mysterious not to prick up one's ears and to feel a palpable tension in this silence, generated by the attempt to synthesise what cannot be reconciled: the fossilisation of the future, the image of the sound, the materialisation of the wave, the objectification of the movement (the one which guides the body when spinning a piece of wood).

Without any noise, the sound spreads out. It cannot yet be heard, but it means paying attention as if one must be wary of sleeping water: the spirals may indeed follow the momentum started in the wood, the unique objects give rise to series. Then, the scenarios are borne out, the utopias prove their viability!

Damien MARCHAL has seen them... these objects being made. He has heard the sounds which filled the artisan’s workshops. The invitation he received in the form of a white card is the opportunity for the artist with sound to imagine a remarkable dialogue with these finished objects some of whose secrets he knows. Still in search of experiments, his taste for risk leads him this time to use his voice exclusively for this new performance.

Matali CRASSET

Matali CRASSET is by training an industrial designer, a graduate of the Ateliers – E.N.S.C.I. (Workshops – National Higher School of Industrial Design). At the beginning of 2000, after her initial experience with Denis Santachiara Italy and with Philippe Starck in France, she set up her own studio in Paris called “matali crasset productions” in a renovated former printing firm in the heart of Belleville. It is there, with the coming and going of children and neighbours that she dreams up her projects.

She considers design to be research, working from an off-centred position allowing to both serve daily routines and trace future scenarios. With both a knowledgeable and naive view of the world, she questions the obviousness of codes so as to facilitate her breaking these bonds. Like her symbolic work, focused on hospitality, "Quand Jim monte à Paris" (When Jim goes up to Paris), is based on a mere visual and conscious perception which she invents another relation to the everyday space and objects. Her proposals are never towards a simple improvement of what already exists but, without rushing things, to develop typologies structured around principles such as modularity, the principle of an interlacing network, etc. Her work revolves around searching for new coordination processes and formulating new logics in life. She defines this search as an accompaniment towards the contemporary.

Matali CRASSET works with a variety of actors, just as easily with the curious craftsman as with an individual in search of a new life scenario, with the industrialist ready to experiment as with the hotelier who wants to develop a new concept (Hi Hotel in Nice or Dar Hi in Nefta), with a small rural commune which wants to develop its cultural and social dynamism or the museum which wants to be transformed (SM’s in s’Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands). Always in search of new territories to explore, she collaborates with eclectic worlds, from Crafts to Contemporary Art, from the textiles industry to fair trade, realising projects in set design, furniture, architecture, graphics, collaborations with artists, and so on such as with artists (Peter Halley), with young furniture-making companies, as well as with municipalities and communes ...

This experienced acquired over the years has led her to currently work on more participative projects, on a local and global level, both in rural and urban settings. From her meetings, creative workshops, discussion and common desires, she works with different project leaders who nevertheless all have the same conviction that these collective processes result in plausible social bonding scenarios.

It’s ultimately the core question of living together which defines her imaginative designs, writings and the sense of Matali’s work

Damien MARCHAL

Born in 1977. Lives and works in Rennes. Teaches in the Breton Higher National School of Architecture in the field of sound within the context of the visual arts. Founder member of the VIVARIUM artist’s workshop in Rennes, 2007.

For several years, he has been working on various problems linked to sound and the influence it can have. Damien MARCHAL uses sound like a material to create pieces and artistic environments. This approach to the many ramifications comes into play in the form of performances, devices or installations as well as in researches and collaborations with other artists. The artist endeavours to implement the devices or the sound is the basic element in the project. His work today questions the concept of going into violent action. He shapes the transducer as a sculpture, applying himself to give a visual meaning to the loudspeaker. In the "Garbage truck bomb" project, the sound produces a shock wave, this is generated by a series of speakers using terrorism's visual codes. The sound depends on the visual field, the object then catalyses attention and focuses hearing on the project and what it has to say. This approach is similar to all his current projects, enabling the study of the properties of this material and its phenomena which can be observed.

Artisans

Alain LARCHER: Tournerie du Plat d’Or
Xaviert BONSERGENT: Prototype Concept
Olivier GUILBAUD: Atelier du Doreur

MICA Gallery
"La Brosse" Route du Meuble,
35760 St Grégoire-Rennes

Matali CRASSET
Guest artist Damien MARCHAL, Visual artist with sound
Commissioners: Michael CHÉNEAU and Julie PORTIER From 18 November 2011 - 25 February 2012
Graphics: Vincent MENU / “Le jardin Graphique”
Publisher: MICAGallery Edition limited to 8 copies Prices on request