design gallery

KAREN SWAMI

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12.08.2022 – 01.10.2023

Les Ateliers Courbet is pleased to announce a winter exhibition offering new work by French ceramicist Karen Swami. The exhibition will have 25 new ceramic vessels by Swami on view, with the work presenting the continuation of Swami’s experimentation with traditional smoke firing craftsmanship and the Japanese Kintsugi technique. 

Swami was drawn to the tactile and visual experience of clay in her early childhood, but it wasn’t until 2009 she chose to dedicate her life to mastering ceramic techniques. A year later, she received her certificate of professional competence in pottery and since then she continues to pursue her study of the material through ongoing experimentations in her studio. Swami has developed an extensive body of work involving various time-honored techniques picked up from ceramic traditions from around the world.

The deep layers of nuanced colors and simple archetypal shapes in Swami’s work are reminiscent of Asian and Hellenistic ceramics dating back to ancient dynasties. To create her unique finish, Swami burnishes each piece with an agate stone, and then bisque-fires, smokes, waxes, and then re-works the piece with Urushi lacquer and pure gold in the traditional Japanese Kintsugi technique. 

Swami works between Paris and Brittany, and has a showroom in the Montparnasse district in Paris by Fondation Cartier. Her work has garnered appreciation from international critics and collectors for its elegant simplicity and textured skins. She has created pieces for the Dior home collection, Design Miami/ and is represented by Les Ateliers Courbet in the United States with the gallery presenting the Karen Swami collection, a previous exhibition, and the forthcoming December 2022 viewing.

French ceramicist Karen Swami’s work has garnered the steady appreciation of international critics and collectors for its elegant simplicity and textured skins. Her nom d’artiste “Swami” is a phonetic adaptation of her maiden name, Souhami, and refers to a spiritual or religious teacher in Sanskrit. As for the inspirations behind her body of work, they range from ancient Egyptian Nagada vases to Japanese ceramic traditions to the work of her contemporary peers including Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye and Magdalene Odundo among others.

The Karen Swami exhibition is on view at Les Ateliers Courbet, 134 10th Avenue, New York through January 10, 2023

JAUME ROIG

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12.08.2022 – 01.10.2023

Les Ateliers Courbet presents new work by Mallorcan Artist-Ceramicist Jaume Roig in the artist’s first solo exhibition outside of Spain.

Les Ateliers Courbet is pleased to present new work by artist-ceramicist Jaume Roig now on view in the Chelsea gallery, marking the first time Roig’s work has been exhibited outside of Spain. Roig lives and works in Mallorca, and draws his inspiration from the natural surroundings of Ses Salines, an area in the southern end of the island, where he finds the necessary elements for his work: stones, the telluric landscapes, the faults of the sea, and the neutral colors of the region. Roig’s work has been praised in Spain, with both public and private installations and exhibitions, and Architectural Digest Spain selected him for “Best of España” 2021.

Roig is a second-generation ceramicist who honed his craft while growing up in his mother’s studio.

“Later I began to look for my own path of work,” Roig shares, “which turned out to be quite figurative but it evolved towards a more crude and abstract way of working with clay. I’m not looking for perfection at all, but I do like to find a finish that looks clean within the chaos.”

Roig’s sculptural vessels and site-specific installations are inspired by ancient forms of expression dating back to cave paintings. His nearly 30 years of experimentation have resulted in Roig’s pared down forms with little to no use of ceramicists’ tools or glazing; highlighting the integrity of material and artisanal dexterity consistent throughout Roig’s body of work.

Roig’s vessels have an organic shape and offer an intimate and modern take on the region’s ancestral ceramic tradition, its cultural heritage, and artist legacy. Two large scale paintings by Roig will be on view in the gallery and serve to complement his ceramics, with both paintings and ceramics combining serene, muted colors, sensuous textures, and organic silhouettes.

“I am honored to unveil Jaume’s new pieces and introduce his body of work to the US with his first solo exhibition outside of Spain,” shared Les Ateliers Founder Melanie Courbet. “Like a frozen movement of a dancer, the sensuous shapes of his sculptural vessels evoke the movements seamlessly controlled by the hands of the artist while the ceramics were being turned. Jaume’s organic forms offer an abstract interpretation of Mallorca’s undulating and mountainous landscapes in both their elegant simplicity, their tactile skin and poetic movement. Each piece embodies the meditative and grounding nature of Jaume’s practice.”

The Jaume Roig exhibition is on view at Les Ateliers Courbet, 134 10th Avenue, New York, through January 10, 2023.

DESIGN MIAMI/

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11.30.2022 – 12.04.2022

Following the ‘Golden Age’ theme of the fair, the installation will focus on time-honored bronzesmithing techniques from around the world with new sculptural pieces resulting from Melanie Courbet’s tight collaboration with the artists and master-artisans.

Ateliers Courbet returns to Design Miami/ this month, bringing three young artists and artisans for the first time to the US — French designer Emma Donnersberg, Chilean artist Abel Cárcamo, and Moroccan wood sculptor Hamza Kadiri — all highly regarded in their respective countries.

The New York-based gallery will unveil sculptural bronze pieces developed by the artists in collaboration with Courbet for their respective solo exhibitions coming up at the gallery in 2023, which will mark each artist’s first ever solo show. These editions will be complemented by recent works by American designer Jonathan Hansen, Italian sculptor Gianluca Pacchioni, German designer Bodo Sperlein, and Burkinabe Maison Intègre’s latest bronze series by French designer Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance.

In line with the gallery’s ongoing mission to highlight the artisanal dexterity of the master-craftsmen it represents, the installation will highlight the work of Fonderie de Coubertin and Fonderie Fusions’ revered bronzesmiths in France, as well as Belgium’s art founders De Clerq and Ginsburg. The works on view result from years of collaboration between Ateliers Courbet, artisans, craftsmen, foundries, and workshops around the globe.

Embracing Design Miami/’s 2022 theme, The Golden Age: Looking to the Future, each piece in Ateliers Courbet’s exhibition embodies the various stages of bronze fabrication, from hand-molding or 3D molding of the original models, the detailed transcription of such into lost-wax or sand-casting molds, to the painstaking patinas.

For the 18th edition of Design Miami/, the gallery will divide its installation into two spaces; with Oscar Ono flooring uniting the area. One side highlights the Penzai series with abstract expressions and bronze sculptures resulting from the ongoing dialogue between French designer Emma Donnersberg and Ateliers Courbet founder Melanie Courbet.

The Penzai series includes limited edition tables and lights inspired by the ancient Chinese art of depicting artistically formed trees, plants, and landscapes in miniature.

Each piece in the series was hand-modeled and sculpted by Abel Cárcamo working in Spain, and later cast in bronze by the bronzesmiths of Fonderie Fusions—David de Gourcuff’s esteemed art foundry based in Auvergne, France. The space showcasing the Penzai series offers an immersive and meditative experience kindred to a Zen Garden, and provides the visitor with a sense of wandering through nature.

Unveiling at Design Miami/ and created in collaboration with Ateliers Courbet for the gallery’s installation at the annual design fair, Hamza Kadiri’s Eros Brut table exemplifies the Moroccan sculptor’s artistic vocabulary and his rarefied wood expertise. Entirely hand-crafted by Kadiri and his team of master wood crafters from one solid trunk of Ash, the piece highlights the painstaking details achieved by the numerous hours of carving and charred finishing using the traditional Japanese Shou-Sugi-Ban technique. The piece is then hand-coated with layers of organic beeswax finish. As a nod to the bronze-focus in Ateliers Courbet’s booth, the counter levered tabletop is secured with a sculptural bronze medallion.

The exhibition will debut at Design Miami/ on Preview Day, Tuesday, November 29, 2022, and will run from November 30 through December 4, 2022, in Booth G18 at Pride Park (opposite the Miami Beach Convention Center).

ETHAN STEBBINS

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09.22.2022 – 10.29.2022

Les Ateliers Courbet is pleased to introduce American artist and master stone carver Ethan Stebbins with the artist’s first gallery exhibition opening on September 22nd at the Chelsea gallery. The show will unveil four unique, large-scale pieces hand-crafted by the artist in collaboration with Courbet.

“My work mainly relies on paying close attention to the organic matter’s properties. One must appreciate the individual characteristics of a certain wood or stone type before shaping them and joining the two together. There is a rather special moment when you carve– a quiet, flashing moment, when the natural character of the stone reveals itself. This moment is everything.”  – Ethan Stebbins

Inspired by the natural landscape and surroundings of his studio in coastal Maine, the artist has been investigating and highlighting the inherent beauty of the stones and other organic materials he carefully selects within a 10-mile radius. He searches the rocky coast for tumble stones to hand-cut and chisel while emphasizing their natural surfaces. His work often abides by the Wabi-Sabi ethos of Japanese design, drawing inspiration from Japanese American furniture maker George Nakashima’s work with instinctual woodcraft techniques that embrace the natural edge and textures of the wood.

Resulting from the artist’s ongoing dialogue and creative collaboration with Les Ateliers Courbet founder Melanie Courbet, this series includes an organic bibliothèque sculpture, an asymmetrical Wabi-Sabi coffee table, and a sculptural bed frame and bench, both of which use the Japanese joinery system that consists of interlocking pieces of wood without any hardware support.

Stebbins began training as a stonemason in 1997, building dry stone walls with local fieldstone. Since then, he has pursued apprenticeships under master gardener Masahiko Seko and American master craftsman Chris Tanguay.

The Ethan Stebbins exhibition will run from September 22 through October 29, 2022, at Les Ateliers Courbet, 134 10th Avenue, New York. The exhibit will be supported by a private reception at 6:00 p.m. on the evening of September 22nd.