Agnès Debizet blurs the boundaries between home and work in the Paris apartment where she has lived for nearly 30 years, creating interiors that are deeply personal and constantly evolving.
"It’s just like a laboratory,” says French ceramicist and sculptor Agnès Debizet of her apartment in the heart of Le Marais, tucked within the French capital’s fourth arrondissement. Indeed, it defies nearly every convention of domestic life. It is neither simply a home nor strictly a studio, but a place of constant experimentation, which interweaves both functions to the point they are virtually inseparable.
“This is where my ideas take shape,” explains Debizet, whose kiln is located in her country house in Burgundy. Although she has a dedicated studio in Paris, her works in fabric, paper and clay spill into every room of the house. Many of the pieces here, such as the lamps, tables and ceramic creations, are prototypes, and blur the boundaries between sculpture and furniture. In one corner of her atelier, a lofty, unrealised clay light with embedded square boxes remains on standby. “I have kept it here because I really like it and would like to create it fully at some point,” she muses. Even the kitchen, with its open display of utensils, feels like an extension of her studio.Debizet, whose career spans 45 years, discovered the apartment back in 1997, soon after having her fourth child, when her family was desperate for space. The first-floor apartment was 150 square metres, but in a state of disrepair. And yet she knew instantly that it was the one. “It had beautiful light,” she says. That light, flooding through the large windows, still defines the Paris apartment, moving freely through the enfilade layout.
Rather than undertake a full-scale renovation, Debizet worked with the existing layout, reconfiguring it to give each of her four children their own bedroom. Now that they are grown up and have left home, Debizet occupies the space differently. “I don’t choose what to fill the rooms with,” she says. “Over the course of 30 years, it has been filled naturally with what I have needed.” Surprisingly, Debizet is not overly attached to many of her pieces. “I have accepted the idea that they need to go off and travel,” she says, as she prepares for a new solo exhibition at the Parisian venue Galerie Gastou, which runs from April 2 until June 6.
The more permanent fixtures are deeply personal. This includes the shelves in the living room, supported by sculpted animal forms, which were Debizet’s first creations in clay. “I needed a bookshelf, so I decided to make one,” she says simply. Furniture follows the same philosophy. “There are a few pieces I didn’t make myself,” she adds. One of her favourites is the four-legged living-room coffee table, which is a clever fusion of ceramic and glass. “I wanted to integrate both materials without the glass simply sitting on top,” says the artist, who shaped it instead in the form of daisy petals. A leather ceiling light is a collaboration with her artist son Vincent. Everything else tends to be improvised or found, such as the pink cocktail chairs in the second reception room, which she rescued from the street.
Unlike many Parisian interiors, there is very little polish. Walls and ceilings remain largely unrestored, and even water-damage stains from an upstairs neighbour have been left untouched. “I like to keep it because it shows signs of life and living,” says Debizet, who draws onto the marks so they look more intentional.The artwork is mostly Debizet’s – she had initially intended her Paris home to be where she experimented more with paper, and as a result, several collages line the walls, notably a giant quadriptych in her studio created from papier-mâché and fabric. Other large collages are foldable and act as screens and backdrops. In the bedroom, a vintage sewing-machine cabinet has been decorated with painted trees.
- 转载自：AD(admiddleeast)
- 图片@AD(admiddleeast)
- 国家：美国
- 编辑：序赞网
- 翻译：序赞网
- 阅读原文
|
|
