Thierry Dreyfus, B Lamp. Photography by Joe Kramm. Courtesy of Thierry Dreyfus and of Les Ateliers Courbet.
Thierry Dreyfus, H Lamp. Photography by Joe Kramm. Courtesy of Thierry Dreyfus and of Les Ateliers Courbet.
September 9, 2020 (New York, United States) – On October 7, 2020, New-York based design gallery Les Ateliers Courbet will unveil new light editions by renowned French lighting artist Thierry Dreyfus. The exhibition will be open by appointment at the Chelsea gallery — 134 Tenth Avenue, New York, NY 10011. The new series includes three sculptural lamps, each embodying the artist’s thoughtful and poetic vocabulary. Dreyfus’s latest “Objets de Lumière” (Objects of Light) expand on the artist’s significant body of work and his continuous explorations of light as an ethereal medium allowing sensorial experiences to trigger our thoughts and emotions. Whether exemplified in his monumental public art installations or the ephemeral experiences of his scenography commissions, Dreyfus’s work seems to emanate from a dialectic between creating light and creating with light.
Thierry Dreyfus, Book Lamp. Photography by Joe Kramm. Courtesy of Thierry Dreyfus and of Les Ateliers Courbet.
Exclusively presented at Les Ateliers Courbet, the artist’s signature editions “Objets de Lumière” are intriguing and intimate punctuations of light – engaging the user as they switch from sculptural pieces to clever light sources.
Despite his discrete character and rooted preference for working in the shadow, the lighting artist has garnered a worldwide recognition with an extensive portfolio of public art installations commissioned by international cities, museums and institutions, such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York with his notable lighting scenography of 2017 Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between exhibition. First introduced to light and its technicality as a lighting assistant in the worlds of theater and opera, Dreyfus has mastered and harnessed light since 1985, using the elusive medium and its wide spectrum of expressions to create ephemeral experiences informed by their environment or a given context.
“Thierry Dreyfus is the man who is making the City of Light live up to its name. The designer is the master of the soft glow, bright beams and laser lines. Dreyfus may be an artist with light, but he is too modest to give himself that title or to compare himself with conceptual neon experimenters of the 1980s and with the light installations of the American artist James Turrell.” — Suzy Menkes, The International Herald Tribune
Thierry Dreyfus, View of Installation at Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral, Paris, Nuit Blanche 2010. Photography by Mathias Wendzinski. Courtesy of Thierry Dreyfus.
Dreyfus’s notable installations and commissions, the prominent institution of the Grand Palais in Paris commissioned the artist for its grand reopening in 2015. Humbled, Dreyfus conceived an ephemeral installation as a tribute to the “City of Light” and the museum’s historical architecture, making the landmark building the inherent and center element of his installation, rather than its canvas or its stage. For one night, Paris’s iconic glass nave shone like a buffed quartz popping out a stone as powerful light beams pierced through the glass roof drawing a dreamy palette in the sky. As part of the City of Paris’s 2006 Nuit Blanche, Dreyfus installed Co-Naissance, a seemingly never-ending 80-meter-high ladder to the sky in front of the National Public Library of France. A play on the title’s dual sense – meaning both knowledge and birth – the work’s verticality reflected an endless aspiration for light, wisdom, and freedom, while calling for our deepest childhood dreams.
In 2010, the City of Paris commissioned Thierry Dreyfus to create a site-specific installation in its legendary cathedral Notre Dame de Paris, making him the first artist ever authorized to install his work inside the historical building. For one night, Dreyfus plunged the edifice into darkness. As an homage to the monument he describes as “a lung of light yearning to breathe,” the artist reversed the traditional, dramatic downward lighting — customary to religious architecture as a representation of the light coming from above down to the prayers. As a poetic allegory, the artist brought his palette of lights in the heart of the cathedral — evoking the light and power coming from within the prayers. Dreyfus’s light beams projected through the cathedral’s stained-glass windows allowed more than 50,000 visitors to see the seminal building in a different light, and its iconic windows to glow on the outside for the first time in history.
In 2015, Dreyfus graced New York City with a permanent public art in the heart of midtown Manhattan, at 135 West 52nd Street. Exploring the relationship between light and the “city that never sleeps,” the neighboring Broadway area and its inhabitants, the artist erected a vertical column of LED lights, climbing up the façade of the residential building like a vertebra at its center. Pulsating softly at the pace of a resting heartbeat, the “Vein of Light” offers a sense of calm and a serene energy to the neighbors and passing by pedestrians, suggesting a pause in the heart of the city’s restless, fast-paced rhythm.
For over 30 years, Dreyfus has been sculpting, drawing and projecting light, expanding his insatiable creativity and artistic curiosity to multiple media including painting, photography and objects. Turning to the latter, which allows light to materialize at an intimate, personal scale through the essence of a material, a movement or a form, the artist has quietly and privately grown a catalogue of sculptural lamps and “Objets de Lumière” for over ten years. His limited editions are exclusively presented at Les Ateliers Courbet since 2015.
Part of significant collections around the world, Dreyfus’s personal work as well as his signature editions draw inspiration from the painstaking and romantic work of Old European Masters as well as Constantin Brancusi and Alberto Giacometti. Ranging from prototypes of lamps filled with salt crystals to square-section neon tubes carefully refracting the natural or the environmental light, each piece bears its own character, reflecting the artist’s never-ending curiosity to reinterpret and expand on the perception of light. With their distinct personalities, they however share in common the artist’s thoughtful, playful and poetic vocabulary.
QUOTES FROM THE ARTIST
“A pure line, a movement, a breath, a comma… The essential.” — Thierry Dreyfus
“Sculpting or drawing light is like molding an environment that inspires or allows one’s personal experience. There is something both humbling and empowering in being able to trigger emotions, inspire or influence one’s experience with an elusive medium that is both absent and yet inherently, terribly present – an unexpected line, a subtle movement… The essential.” — Thierry Dreyfus
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NOTES TO EDITORS
About Les Ateliers Courbet
Les Ateliers Courbet is a New York-based design gallery with a distinct curatorial focus dedicated to the ongoing craftsmanship mastery and design legacies carried-on by the contemporary artisans and centuries-old manufactures it represents.
Established in 2013 by Mélanie Courbet, the gallery was born from the desire to share a deep appreciation for master-craftsmen’s ethos and works of art that embody artisanal dexterity and cultural heritage. Since its opening, Les Ateliers Courbet has garnered international recognition from a clientele of private collectors, interior designers and institutions alike. Today, the gallery represents over 50 traditional crafts passed on by long lineages of esteemed artisans from around the world, including marquetry, woodcraft, ceramic and glasswork, weaving and metalsmithing.
While pursuing its mission with exhibitions, institutional collaborations and publications, the gallery further supports its ateliers with the Editions Courbet – a series of editioned pieces created by guest artists and hand-crafted by the gallery’s master-craftsmen. The inaugural Editions Courbet collection will be unveiled in the Fall of 2020.
Les Ateliers Courbet
134 Tenth Avenue
New York, NY 10013
United States
https://www.ateliercourbet.com/