Camille Blatrix: Fortune / Atelier E.B: Passer-by

Atelier E.B, Passer-by

The first major exhibition in France of Atelier E.B, a fashion label under which designer Beca Lipscombe and artist Lucy McKenzie collaborate, combines contemporary creation, the history of fashion and museum design. It opens with a bespoke showroom for their new collection, Jasperwear, and continues with historical research into the figure of the mannequin, from ancient sculpture to department store windows. It ends with a series of commissions by contemporary artists.

The exhibition at Lafayette Anticipations is coproduced with Serpentine Galleries in London, where it was first staged in autumn 2018. Content has been reconfigured for the Paris context, with new works spread over two floors. Atelier E.B has also reimagined the gallery’s central space using original elements from the (now defunct) Art Nouveau staircase of Galeries Lafayette department store.

For Atelier E.B, the overlap between art, design, commerce and display is centred upon the figure of the mannequin and the runway show – as modes of artistic expression and reflectors of cultural change. From the World Fairs and Expositions of the twentieth century to iconic department stores, ethnographic museums and fashion retail under Communism, Atelier E.B presents the fruit of two years of research into the practitioners behind this rich and at times undervalued visual history. The exhibition makes special reference to the contribution women have made to this history, as artists and craftswomen.

Camille Blatrix, Fortune

Camille Blatrix approaches sculpture through a language he derives from the manufactured objects that litter our lives. His complex, elaborate installations are a mix of disparate materials (metal, wood and plastic). They also oppose mass-produced elements with others which have been hand-crafted; a balance that instils each sculpture with an emotional aura.

For this exhibition at Lafayette Anticipations, his first large-scale show in Paris, Camille Blatrix was invited to occupy the top level of the glass exhibition tower, designed by Rem Koolhaas. This transparent space overlooking the surrounding rooftops has something of a penthouse feel, where power and opulence have reached their limit, and must be replaced by other conquests, a possible redemption, or a spiritual, mystical quest.

Fortune is Camille Blatrix’s first solo show at a major art venue in France. It in fact carries on a longstanding dialogue between the artist and Lafayette Anticipations, after Joining Forces with the Unknown, a pre-opening show in 2016, and the semi-permanent work he created for the lower ground-floor gallery in 2018. All the works in this new project were produced on-site, in the Lafayette Anticipations studios.