Exhibitions

The group show, Mimesis. A living design brings together 400 works by 90 creators on the subject of the evolution of nature in design. From modern biomorphism to biomimicry, from biofabrication to the recreation of living things through digital design, this exploration is as much historical as it is forward-looking.

Following the acclaim of the exhibition 10,000 Years of Luxury at the Louvre Abu Dhabi in 2019, curated by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs Museum Director Olivier Gabet, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs presents Luxes.

A sincere, organic piece of poetry, fallenTree is a unique object with its singular shape and the natural presence of oak branches. In order to better evoke the lack of gravity, the base is made from highly technical optical glass, the perfect transparency gives the dreamlike illusion of a slight imbalance.

For the past 10 years, the Cité internationale de la tapisserie in Aubusson has pursued an ambitious policy of contemporary creation. For the first time, a major retrospective exhibition brings together all the works produced over a decade of calls for projects, patronage commissions and collaborations with design studios, including the collection “La Tapisserie d’Aubusson: The Great Lady” by YMER&MALTA. This exceptional exhibition illustrates the incredible modernity of Aubusson tapestry.

The fruit of a collaboration between Valérie Maltaverne, founder of the YMER&MALTA studio, and designer Benjamin Graindorge, the Fallen Tree bench explores the relationship between humans and nature. The concept of time is evoked in the fall of the tree. How many years until the tree reaches even the roots of the sky? How many hours to reduce it to planks? How many days before it is reborn in a new form? How long a wait before someone comes to sit upon it and meditate, ad infinitum, on the cycle of life?

In fallenTree those goals have been achieved. YMER&MALTA and Graindorge have assembled before and after, the natural and the artificial. Here, in this highly engaged work, the two designers demonstrate and explore the omnipotence of humans over their environment. They invite the user to contemplate and celebrate the luxury of a nature still alive, a nature now so vulnerable in the face of passing time.

Cloé Pitiot
Co-Curator of the 10,000 Years of Luxury exhibition

A captivating alchemy between Nature and new Technologies. The notion of ornamentation in design is evolving and being inspired by arabesques, motifs and decorative systems from nature. By associating these forms with new technologies and new materials, the creation of design objects is changing.

Together, Valérie Maltaverne and Benjamin Graindorge assemble their constellations of ideas. For ten years they have been inventing new creative processes, in which design, subject matter, materials, techniques, and technological innovations come together. Through their collaboration these two creators, as shy as they are bold, have together formed a vast creative heritage, a unique abstract vocabulary of shapes and techniques, landscapes and journeys. Their intellectual and artistic intimacy is expressed through words, lines, and emotions.
Benjamin Graindorge and YMER&MALTA represent an encounter, a new terrain in the world of contemporary design, an intimate landscape in search of the impossible accuracy of words, a landscape in the making.

Cloé Pitiot
Curator of the Design Department of the Musée National d’Art Moderne
Centre Pompidou, Paris
Catalogue

Valérie Maltaverne, artistic director at YMER&MALTA, gave a presentation at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum about the philosophy and methods of the studio and presented her collection “La Belle Endormie : La Marqueterie Revisitée”.

Jeunes Artistes en Europe. Les Métamorphoses is dedicated to the diversity of voices and the vitality of exchanges that animate the vast European artistic territory. Sconce asphericalSkylight and mirrors mirrorMirage, YMER&MALTA / Benjamin Graindorge.

“The present project, YMER&MALTA’s first to reach outside French craft, came out of a 2016 visit to The Noguchi Museum during which Valerie Maltaverne decided to apply her model to Akari. The challenge was to see whether she might, treating Akari as the tradition, extend its fundamental alchemies into the future.
Ultimately, YMER&MALTA’s modest plan to produce five designs with Akari principles developed into a massively complex international collaboration with five designers, and artisans in more than 20 different disciplines. Overcoming many technical hurdles, they pushed linen, metal, resin, Plexiglas, concrete, and paper in new directions and produced twenty-six light fixtures — which now join the radiant, ever-expanding legacy of Noguchi’s Akari.”
Dakin Hart, Senior Curator, The Noguchi Museum

Valérie Maltaverne gave a presentation highlighting the parallels between YMER&MALTA and the work methods of French Haute-Couture houses, acknowledging how much of our French heritage is present in the creations of her design studio.
A long and meticulous working process, involving precious materials and traditional savoir-faire as well as innovative technologies, unite both professions as they seek to reach a level of excellence that transforms their production into works of art.
Just as a maison Haute Couture, YMER&MALTA customises pieces from its collections and also creates unique pieces according to its clients special demands.

The first solo exhibition devoted to the collaborative work between the design studio YMER&MALTA and Benjamin Graindorge in an institutional cultural venue, “Habiter” presents fifteen pieces edited and produced by YMER&MALTA, between 2009 and 2016. These include two unpublished creations unveiled on the occasion of the exhibition, one of them acquired by the city of Beauvais for its collection.

The aim of this exhibition was to explore the fascination for vegetation and the ambiguity of man’s relationship with the forest through art works by Eva Jospin, Frédérique Morrel, Arthur Aillaud and YMER&MALTA/Benjamin Graindorge.