From 7 to 16 March, Geneva-based Fine Watchmaking company Vacheron Constantin and ECAL/Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne, featuring among the world’s top ten universities of art and design, present at the gallery l’elac (in the entrance of ECAL) the “Arts & Crafts & Design: Time according to Alessandro Mendini and his Artisans” exhibition, in collaboration with the Fondazione Cologni dei Mestieri d’Arte in Milan.

The Works

This exhibition, which comprises thirteen works of art, is the first to initiate a dialogue on the theme of Time between Fine Watchmaking and the world of design, arts and crafts featured in other manual disciplines.

The creations designed by Alessandro Mendini were made by renowned Italian artisans out of thirteen different materials. The dialogue between the artist, the designer, and the master artisan, between the person who conceives the idea and the one who interprets it, conveys the vitality of an economic, productive, and cultural system of which the legacy remains clearly in evidence today.

The exhibition’s cultural ambition is thus to highlight the fundamental role played by the artistic crafts within our society, by including them in an ongoing dialogue evolving in step with modern creative expression.

Each piece is signed by both Alessandro Mendini and the artisan who made it. In accordance with the wishes expressed by Alessandro Mendini, all the objects on display be designed to showcase the values of excellence of the main craft trades and materials, using techniques that are partly traditional and partly experimental. Each of the objects has its own aesthetic identity, its own visual language coinciding with the characteristics of the materials it “wears.”

Where artistic Crafts meet Design

In the words of Alessandro Mendini, “There are countless artistic materials and techniques, reflecting the innumerable attacks that the modern world inflicts on the grand craftsmanship traditions. These days we ‘don’t have time,’ and these thirteen works are just the kind of objects that take a great deal of it. That is why making them is meant as a demonstration. In the case in point, they speak about the beauty of works that are created, not to meet a specific goal, but as an end in themselves, and they demonstrate the existence of spaces that offer infinite possibilities in the areas that lie midway between art, craftsmanship, and design, beyond their exclusive domains.”

The Exhibitions

After the SIHH and the ECAL, Vacheron Constantin, owner of these objets d’art, will send the exhibition on a world tour to promote the importance of dialogue between artistic crafts and design. The next step will see stop-overs during the European Artistic Crafts Days (JEMA) will host the exhibition in Milan, from 5 to 14 April 2013.