Get out the thesaurus! To close an adventure of two decades between the walls of the Gaudard house, the Mudac opens the doors of the “Extraordinary!” Be careful… language tics are on the lookout, too much enthusiasm. Even director Chantal Prod’Hom remains on her guard: “This is a fireworks exhibition, our 122nd here and we worked on it all together, making completely subjective choices, we assume. Choices, say, individuals. I’m not going to say “extraordinary” every two seconds! ” She could.
Everything that fits into this definition, from gesture to form, small details to their macro environment, the engaging difficulty of Emma Lucy Linford to entrust the time of the exhibition, the ghostly silhouette of the dress crocheted in thread of brass for two years with the purchase of an installation that marked the Milan Furniture Fair in 2017, everything in this exhibition can be read through the prism of the extraordinary. This “step aside”, “this vision of design and contemporary art” that Chantal Prod’Hom still defines as “what comes out of standards by taking shape in different materials, sizes and according to different tastes.”
Curious look
Mudac conceptualized it without seeking to define it, it unearthed it, abounding, in its collections like this erupting vase-sculpture by Genevan Christian Gonzenbach. Or even, imperative, among certain artists and designers who worked for the occasion like the Austrians, Katharina Mischer and Thomas Traxler, authors of a blown glass chandelier with each bulb housing – or imprisoning? – an insect in a buzzing concert. But this “Extra-ordinary!”, The Lausanne institution has above all staged it in a total work. Sensitive. Radiant. Enveloping.
We smile in front of the table service composed of a wrench spoon, a pedal spoon, a fork-shears, we wander in the cardboard decorations, we inspect a lot of old tires … ceramic, let yourself be taken by the spirit of the place or rather, the spirits imagined by Germano Zullo and personified by Albertine. Above all, it feels like home, literally and figuratively. From the organized mess of the garage to the warmth of the bathroom, from the intimate aesthetic of the bedroom to the more refined of the dining room. We still visit the playroom to build and test or the kitchen inhabited by the grater of Mona Hatoum out of her domestic shackles and her usual measures to become powerfully threatening.
“It foreshadows the move to Mudac”
The Mudac, a freely curious museum of its time, thus gives back its vocation for living on the medieval walls of the Gaudard house before reopening in 2022 on the Plateforme site10. Sébastien Guenot’s scenography has made its nooks and crannies real places of life for the objects chosen by the museum’s curatorial team. A great idea! Objects do not decorate, heroes of the history of the extraordinary, they inhabit the extraordinary. “I asked myself a lot of questions,” he admits. How to make this house habitable, how to make it an extraordinary dwelling? It was a bit of a puzzle, no doubt because we are afraid of what is out of the ordinary. Then came the idea of boxes – those of Lausanne residents recovered from the recycling center – it bodes well for the move to Mudac, which will soon be packing up for the station. “
White like so many screens on which to project one’s imagination, the boxes line all the rooms. Always white, they also shape. Chairs, bookcases, green plants, electrical outlets, hair brushes, slippers, the gymnasians of Morges and the students took care of the detail, and in detail, these other objects. Together, they unfold their story, that of a mundane or falsely ordinary home – it’s a decor! – at the same time as they embark on this tale of drawer so enjoyable of the extraordinary.
You have to open your eyes, push the doors of a wardrobe, browse between the shelves of a library, watch the open drawers to see Bettina Dittlmann’s iron filings jewelry or sometimes look for this extraordinary white on white camouflage in the kitchen like this delicate vase. “The way may not be very museum-like, concludes assistant director Claire Favre Maxwell, but it is a multi-layered exhibition. One can marvel at the expressive diversity of artists and designers; you can also find out what their areas of reflection are. ”
Created: 02.25.2020, 10:08 p.m.
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