29 november 2016
November 2016, Miami, USA – Maison Perrier-Jouët continues its enduring conversation with the world of creation via a new artistic partnership with the San Francisco-based designer Andrew Kudless. Unveiled at DesignMiami/ 2016, Kudless’s visionary works build on Perrier-Jouët’s historic ties with Art Nouveau.
Maison Perrier-Jouët has just embarked on a new creative collaboration with designer Andrew Kudless for the 2016-2017 season. He will unveil a new installation specially designed for L’Eden by Perrier-Jouët, a unique immersive experience based around a completely new vision of nature. Andrew will also create an original piece devoted to the ritual of serving champagne.
«I was interested in the way that strands, fibers, branches and vines were applied across every aspect of Art Nouveau, from paintings to architecture,» says Kudless. «The curving strand motif evokes nature and movement over time. I wanted to look at four of Perrier-Jouët’s emblematic materials – wood, chalk, glass and grapes – and see how I could create strands out of each one.»
The first piece that visitors encounter is Kudless’s installation Strand Garden: three screens of curving 8’ strands – evoking tree trunks or vines – that mark out a central area. «You’re in a small clearing,» Kudless explains. «You get hints of what lies beyond, but it’s an inward-looking, reflective space.» Each strand is illuminated from within by light that gently swells and fades, first appearing solid but slowly revealing its hollow form as the light intensifies.
Inside the inner garden, visitors will discover Kudless’s other creations. The robotically-milled oak tops of his interlocking benches evoke Perrier-Jouët’s riddling racks and wine presses, while the concrete of their legs has been specially treated to resemble the chalk that shelters the Maison’s cellars and nourishes its vines. The glowing table at the center of the space shares the same organic strand motif, but this time in a clear bioplastic that conjures up glass. Illuminated from within, each of its filaments sparkles in the light to evoke the radiant clarity and fine, vibrant bubbles of Perrier-Jouët’s distinctive wines.
Finally, his extraordinary ice bucket design takes the organic relationship with champagne to the limit. Kudless has 3D-printed ground Chardonnay skins to create a piece entitled The Perrier-Jouët Marc Metamorphosis: a tribute to the crystalline freshness, subtlety and sophistication of Perrier-Jouët’s Belle Epoque cuvée. Its rippled petals are a conscious metaphor for the wrinkled skin of a raisin. «I was drawn to that,» Kudless explains. «The grapes were dried in order to be ground up, and the ice bucket reproduces the texture of a grape as it dries.»
With grapes as its raw material, The Perrier-Jouët Marc Metamorphosis offers a poetic parallel for the way in which champagne is crafted from nature itself. At Eden by Perrier-Jouët – the immersive experience which the Maison will be offering in parallel to DesignMiami/ – crafted nature comes to life in an extraordinary and enchanting experience. A love of nature runs deep through the history and philosophy of Perrier-Jouët, informing both its artistic tastes and its winemaki ng expertise. In this new collaboration with Andrew Kudless, it crystallizes into objects that express the Maison’s founding principles in dazzlingly contemporary form
About Andrew Kudless
After training as an architect, Andrew Kudless created his design studio Matsys in 2004. His work – which has been exhibited in the United States, Great Britain, France, Japan and China and is part of the permanent collections of the Centre Pompidou, the FRAC Centre and SFMOMA – explores a territory at the crossroads of architecture, engineering, biology and computation. Inspired by organic forms, his creations are rooted in his notion of digital craftsmanship: the way in which cutting-edge technology can be used to foster unique and unpredictable artistic creations.
About Perrier-Jouët
Perrier-Jouët is an iconic champagne house with an exceptional vineyard. It is known for the finesse, floral and elegant notes of its wines, fashioned with the expertise of only seven Cellar Masters since its foundation in 1811. Since its 1902 collaboration with Art Nouveau pioneer Emile Gallé, creator of the anemone design for the house’s Belle Epoque prestige cuvée, Perrier-Jouët has commissioned work from established and emerging artists including Daniel A rsham, Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance, Miguel Chevalier, Makoto Azuma, Tord Boontje, Studio Glithero and Simon Heijdens and more recently Tord Boontje, Vik Muniz, mischer’traxler and Ritsue Mishima. For more information, please visit: www.perrier-jouet.com and on instagram@perrierjouet.
