In his ‘Spring’ exhibition at Carpenters Workshop Gallery in London, Mathieu Lehanneur takes us into a world of flux. As if the cycle of the seasons and nature’s forces have specially looked at the fate of objects… Here, the artist-designer with a passion for science, grapples with ancestral materials in order to suffuse them with plasticity, fluidity and tone.

The works in the ‘Spring’ exhibition seem to hesitate between solid, liquid and gaseous. They appear to be suspended mid-transformation in a poetic state of metamorphosis. Marble and aluminium become liquid, onyx becomes air and glass softens as in a return to its original state. 

Although the function of each piece is easily recognised (table, chandelier, lamp), the works transcend such definitions. Their movement and suggested dynamic state force you to question what you thought was true to the point where it seems even the inert is being revived.

The presence of glass accompanies all pieces like a transparent skin protecting the object’s soul. Glass is worked in multiple forms using traditional craft methods: curved tubes for ‘Les Cordes’ chandelier, hand blown glass globes for the new version of the ‘S.M.O.K.E.’ lamps, ribbed glass on ‘Spring’ lamps and laminated panels on the ‘Liquid’ tables. 

The materials are all worked in their natural color, in their native condition, almost primitive. But this apparent simplicity belies a highly sophisticated technical and technological implementation. 

The ‘Liquid Aluminium’ and ‘Liquid Marble’ tables were designed, for example, using 3D special effects software created for the film industry and the designer sought advice from laboratory equipment manufacturing experts in order to bend the curved glass tubes of ‘Les Cordes’.

Mathieu Lehanneur, the designer of ‘Tomorrow Is Another Day’, a wall light installation that conjures up the daily rhythm of weather changes, and of a work for Audemars Piguet that saw rocks apparently levitating mid air, continues on his optimistic quest to soften our world and bring us joy.