Marie & Alexandre - Végétasia

Exploring the theme of vulnerability, Marie & Alexandre and Marc Jeanson reinvent the horticultural greenhouse in the form of a laboratory revealing the vulnerability of the living.

Through various devices combining plant species and artisanal creations in blown glass, the visitor apprehends the phenomena of phototropism (reaction to light), gravitropism (Perception of gravity), thigmotropism (reaction to touch) or carnivory (Prey trapping and digestion).

Both on a human and microscopic scale, the scenography highlights defense mechanisms of the plant world in relation to its climatic or material environment, to compensate for its apparent fragility.

Presented at the Martell Foundation in Cognac in 2022, Végétasia is adapted for the gallery in a version designed as an experimental and demonstrative device in order to allow visitors to forget their prejudices and connect with plants and their ingenuity.

In collaboration with:

Laëtitia Andrighetto and Jean-Charles Miot, glassblowers.

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Explorant le thème de la vulnérabilité, Marie & Alexandre et Marc Jeanson réinventent la serre horticole sous la forme d’un laboratoire révélateur de la vulnérabilité du vivant.

À travers différents dispositifs alliant espèces végétales et créations artisanales en verre soufflé, le visiteur appréhende les phénomènes de phototropisme (réaction à la lumière), de gravitropisme (perception de la gravité), de thigmotropisme (réaction au toucher) ou encore de carnivorie (piégeage et digestion des proies).

Tant à l’échelle humaine qu’à l’échelle microscopique, la scénographie met en valeur les mécanismes de défense du monde végétal par rapport à son environnement climatique ou matériel, pour compenser son apparente fragilité.

Présentée à la Fondation Martell à Cognac en 2022, Végétasia s'adapte à l'espace de la galerie dans une version conçue comme un dispositif expérimental et démonstratif afin de permettre aux visiteurs d’oublier leurs préjugés et de se connecter avec les plantes et leur ingéniosité

En collaboration avec:

Laëtitia Andrighetto and Jean-Charles Miot, souffleurs de verre.

About Marie & Alexandre

Marie Cornil and Alexandre Willaume met in 2018 during their participation at Design parade 13 at the Villa Noailles in Hyères. Their backgrounds are indicative of complementarities, Marie studied visual arts at HEAD in Geneva before joining Ecal in Lausanne, while Alexandre completed his training in industrial design at ENSCI - Les Ateliers,  also benefiting from a university exchange in San Francisco at the California College of Art.

In 2018, Alexandre had already been working at the Bouroullec studio for nine years, when Marie joined the studio for two years.

Each developing their personal practices, that of painting and sculpture for Alexandre with WANC and textile and color work for Marie, they present together during the summer 2021, the Mobile series at the Villa Noailles which marks the beginning of their work around the red clay of Salerne. The particularity and the strength of the duo are based on the dialogue that Marie and Alexandre establish between themselves and craftsmen-artists. This relationship of curiosity between the two designers is the bearer of fertile collaborations. They apprehend each situation by discovering the materials, their techniques and the know-how of the craftsmen to design objects by an approach that is not hylomorphic. They implement the art du terrain, in which Making is central. Their itinerancy leads them to imagine objects as landscapes or living collections. Their current collaboration with Editors encourages them to think of objects with a wider distribution that complement the collectible approach of the very small series imagined for the gallery.

In March 2022, the Martell Foundation in Cognac inaugurates the Végétasia exhibition, result of a collaboration between the duo, the botanist Marc Jeanson and the Ateliers of the Foundation.

They begin a cycle of exhibitions at the Galerie Signé in September 2022 with a presentation of lights entitled Horizon, followed in January 2023 by Iris, an open research on the mirror object and its reflections.

In March of the same year, the Galerie Signé will host a new version of the Végétasia exhibition.

Exhibition & Others :

Iris Galerie Signé, Paris, January 2023 

Horizon Galerie Signé, Paris, September 2022 

Internship Ex Ecal Becque, la tour de Paix, Switzerland 2022

Exposition Végétasia, l’intime des plantes, in collaboration with Marc Jeanson, Martell Foundation, Cognac 2022 

Galerie Signé, Paris 2022 

Collectible fair, Brussels 2022 

La Bocca della Verita, Curated by Margherita Ratti, Brussels 2022 

Mati Galerie, Geneva 2021 

Guru craft & design fair, Paris 2021 

Villa Noailles, « Manufacto » Hermès Fondation , Hyères France 2021

Villa Noailles, Design Parade 15, Hyères, France 2018, Finalists of the design festival

About Marc Jeanson

Marc Jeanson is an agricultural engineer with a degree from the Paris-Grignon National Agronomic Institute and a botanist, with a doctorate in plant systematics from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris and the New York Botanical Garden.

After directing the Herbarium of Montpellier, in 2013 he became responsible for the National Herbarium at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.

Involved in many events related to the garden, he has been scientific advisor to the Rencontres Botaniques de Varengeville-sur-Mer since 2012 and was associate curator of the «Jardins» exhibition at the National Galleries of the Grand Palais, in Paris, in 2017. .
He is the author of numerous scientific publications but also of scientific media for specialists or the general public, including Botaniste (Grasset, 2019), signed with the help of journalist Charlotte Fauve.

In 2022 he is curator of the exhibition “Végétal – L’école de la beauté” presented at the Museum of Fine Arts in Paris, composed like a herbarium from the species present in Chaumet creations.
Nearly 400 works thus offer the public a free stroll through 5,000 years of art and science, told through the dialogue between paintings, sculptures, textiles, photographs, furniture and 80 jewelery objects from Chaumet and other houses.

For this exhibition, more than 70 museums, foundations, galleries and private collectors have loaned works: the Muséum d’Histoire naturelle, the Musées d’Orsay and the Louvre, the Institut de France, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Pistoia Musei, or the Nancy School Museum, the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, the Albion Art Collection in Tokyo, to name but a few.

Marc Jeanson is currently head of the botanical department of the Majorelle Garden in Marrakech since 2019.