Since 2017, the Audi Talents prize has supported and accompanied the work of emerging artists in France. A laboratory of forms that has placed the 2021 edition under the sign of exploration. That of the form by underlying methods. Winners of this new section, Henri Frachon and Antoine Decharny challenge with their exhibition “Abstract design manifesto” presented at the Palais de Tokyo. In a luminous space, four rows of objects on a base are aligned. Their extremely varied silhouettes and materials distinguish them from one another. Utilitarian objects or sculptures? To define them by their functions seems inadequate. More than an experiment, “Abstract design manifesto” is a fundamental research on the essence of the form. From an elementary subject such as the hole, the triangle, the dissonance, and the rush doucine, the two creators imagine an abstract design and its innumerable formal aspects which can result from it. Deprived of any utilitarian function, the object is presented to us in its purest appearance. The materials, whether wood, glass or iron, and the processes of artisanal or industrial creations, thus play the role of accompaniment towards this step towards an intrinsic form.
“Clear, strange and materialist”, the abstract design of the two winners questions and above all offers a different look at the object, as its contours draw it.
Louise Conesa