Alessandro Mendini and Vincent Beaurin knew each other and had already collaborated on a joint project. When the Circuit contemporary art centre offered them
carte blanche (at the suggestion of Delphine Coindet), they were quick to take up the challenge. The result is a dialogue based on works by Vincent Beaurin (the sculptor was the subject of an exhibition at La Verrière in Brussels in 2002) – a culmination of their previous collaboration,
Fragilisme, at the Fondation Cartier (Paris).
Alessandro Mendini is a radical design theorist and a leading member of Italy's experimental, avant-garde Studio Alchimia. Here, he creates a setting for his younger partner's works, highlighting their joyous mood and vivid colours, playing on their forms and taking inspiration from them to create a fresco cycle establishing an uninterrupted dialogue with the sculptures on display.
Both artists have created an original new work for the event: Vincent Beaurin's Caisse à outils d’homme préhistorique ("Toolkit for prehistoric man") is a series of 15 tools fashioned in optical glass, while Alessandro Mendini has produced a red and black silkscreen print – a mandala based on his original stage sets for a 1998 production of Luigi Pirandello's comedy Lupa, designed in 1998.
