The Carpetalogue / MM (Paris)
Libby Sellers Gallery, London
October 10 – December 15, 2012
Statement: «Gallery Libby Sellers presents a series of elaborately detailed and intricately woven carpet designs by the French art and design duo M/M (Paris). Commissioned in celebration of both their twentieth anniversary and the publication of a definitive monograph of their work, the exhibition of four new works acts like a condensed catalogue – or Carpetalogue – for M/M’s practice.
Michaël Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak originally established M/M (Paris) as a graphic design studio in 1992. Their close associations with the music, fashion and art worlds have led to their becoming one of the most distinctive and acclaimed creative voices of their generation, within graphic design and beyond. Their longstanding creative clients and collaborators include fashion designers Yohji Yamamoto, Nicolas Ghesquière at Balenciaga and Riccardo Tisci at Givenchy; musicians such as Björk, Madonna, The Micronauts and Kanye West; and artists including Sarah Morris, Philippe Parreno and Pierre Huyghe — with whom they also designed the Etienne Marcel Café in Paris in 2001. M/M’s work is held in the public collections of Tate Modern in London, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Centre Pompidou, Paris and the MMK/Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt.
Drawing upon imagery and characters that have become leitmotifs within M/M’s practice from the last two decades, the Carpetalogue’s ‘pages’ – or carpets – express M/M’s distinctive graphic approach of combining free forms within strictly controlled compositions. Michaël and Mathias consider the project to be an extension of their own selves, and of the way they collaborate. As they have said, The Carpetalogue is a ‘map of the M/M brain’ – with excerpts from their notebooks, references to their Givenchy Spring/Summer 2012 show
invitation, their design contribution for the Designers for Japan relief fund following the tsunami of 2011, and– perhaps, the most identifiable – the M/M (Paris) Agent who acts as a metaphor for how Michaël and Mathias collaborate between themselves and others.
Each of the hand-knotted woolen rugs, produced as a numbered edition, has been made in Varanasi, India. To oversee the production, Gallery Libby Sellers has worked with Abhishek Poddar, who had previously overseen similarly successful carpet projects with Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami and Julian Opie.»
Organised on the occasion of the release of the book, M to M of M/M (Paris), written by Emily King, designed by Graphic Though Facility, published by Thames & Hudson.
