Cité du design - Bâtiments H

"Particle 14" regroups designers of different generations and horizons. Since its creation little over a year ago, the association has worked with design as a friendly and humaine science. "The subject is not the object, but man" warned Charlotte Perriand. No matter: all design implies a pact with the material; subjugated, yielding and yet subversive. Concrete and metal are the materials dealt with by the exhibition "The Age of Doing". They evoke towns, the artifice, the "Junkspace" of Rem Koolhaas, our pain within a dirty dust cloud, the opposite of empathy which relates more to silk or mahogany.

"Every matter is noble, each of my objects carries the promise of a gem, whether it is in gold or bamboo" affirms, for example, Marie-Christine Dorner, member of the association. In gold or in concrete? Strategies and images emerge, linked to changes in scale, subtle mutations in balance and surface. The members of "Particle 14" search out the weak link during a discussion without taboos. The dialogue is open, orientated by straightforward ideas: simplicity, honesty, know-how and effectiveness. Pencil lines or traces of mood, the algebra of "Particle 14" is direct and effective; it generates objects which unite us, recount and speak to us, without being overbearing.