Can you tell us about your collaboration with Galeries Lafayette? What attracted you to this invitation from the department stores'?
I was invited to design a work around the hopper and escalators in the Galeries Lafayette Nantes shop, an area that is very interesting because of its location and its particularity, but complex in its shape, angles and volumes, and the work of light that these elements imply. A real challenge! I particularly like working with different media and being able to create in this unusual space was a huge motivation for me.
In my work, I'm very keen to highlight architectural heritage, to weave a story through the representation of buildings. Galeries Lafayette has an extremely rich history, and over the years it has been a real force for change in our cities. It's also why I wanted to embark on the adventure of telling the story of the department stores' by imagining Bienvenue à Lafayetteville.
What is your vision of Galeries Lafayette in Nantes, whose building is one of the city's most emblematic architectural landmarks? How did this place inspire you? What did you want to say or reveal about it?
The Decré building is inextricably linked with Nantes and its city centre. Galeries Lafayette and Grands Magasins Decré developed simultaneously in Paris and Nantes, and share many similarities and a bold vision. These department stores have contributed a great deal to the life of the city centre, and they have also been innovative from a technological point of view, with the installation of lifts and escalators within them.
These shops are inspiring because there's always a lot going on, from the craziest of festive events - such as the rooftop terrace with its restaurant, carousel, pool and runway - to the most tragic, such as the destruction of the Decré building by architect Henri Sauvage. More than just buildings, it's this whole history that I wanted to highlight in Bienvenue à Lafayetteville.
Your installation brings together the different architectural styles of Galeries Lafayette shops in Paris, France and sometimes abroad. By bringing together all these elements in your fresco, you propose a new experience of space and time. Can you tell us about your artistic approach to this installation?
When I decided to work around the escalators, I wanted to develop my installation over the entire surface, so that the viewer would be totally immersed in this black-and-white city, with a desire to confuse them by offering different ways of reading the work. When you take the escalators, you see 6 different ways of reading the work: from top to bottom, from bottom to top, and then diagonally. Everything intertwines and overlaps.
In any case, it was a real pleasure to discover and immerse myself in the archives of Galeries Lafayette, located on Boulevard Haussmann in Paris. I wanted to incorporate as many historical details as possible into my work, and the shop's archives, which preserve its memory, provided me with this material. So there are hundreds of details that reveal the history of Galeries Lafayette: the evolution of the store's different logos, old advertising campaigns, traces of incredible events that have taken place there - from Jules Védrines' plane landing on the roof to the world's biggest fashion show - and of course the evolution of the building over time. All these elements make up Bienvenue à Lafayetteville. Entering this imaginary city means travelling back in time, and rediscovering the evolution of fashion, graphic design, architecture and, more broadly, the transformation of our cities.
The installation is set in the escalators of the department stores', and can be read in motion: did you imagine a particular narrative for this installation?
There is no single narrative: you discover the details that make up Lafayetteville as you go up the escalators; and you discover new ones as you come down. Each point of view offers new details and a reading of different areas that are superimposed; each surface is conceived as a painting that tells a story, that complements or confronts the elements that can be seen in other shots.
Drawing on the Galeries Lafayette archives, what was the most striking detail to illustrate?
I can think of a lot of interesting and even incredible events, but I think what I enjoyed drawing the most was this extraordinary place that is the Paris Haussmann department stores', with its mouldings, its gilding, its balconies and, of course, the dome and its monumental grand staircase, which no longer exists today.
