Founded in 2013 by French artists and designers Apolline Couverchel and Gauthier Haziza, Studio Élémentaires reinterprets environmental motion through a poetic and theatrical lens. Drawing on their roots in the performing arts, the duo’s fascination with kineticism is expressed seamlessly through their preferred medium: light.
They draw endless inspiration from urban environments, building their signature visual language out of metals paired with glass, acrylic, and a wide array of optical filters. The mechanics on each piece are sometimes deliberately revealed, the better to highlight the technical beauty of the object and its craftsmanship. Hidden, these elements vanish, leaving the stage wide open for motion to weave its magic. The light emanates from various sources, sometimes repurposed, or custom designed from LED components. This disruptive approach to creation, blending craftsmanship and modern technology, is the guiding light of their distinctive aesthetic, uncompromising and conceptual.
The resulting artefacts move in captivatingly slow sequences through time and space, inviting the viewer to dip into a contemplative pause. Far from duplicating reality, the pair work to extract and isolate individual fragments of our world, raising questions about reproducing, recomposing, and altering. The result is simple, sophisticated. It’s through this neo-archaic paradox that the singular character of Studio Élémentaires’ work shines out. At the crossroads of Art and Design, in the No Man’s Land between cultural object and functional sculpture, this is where the duo can be found.
After a first collaboration with Michelin-starred Chef Paul Pairet, and several artistic direction fashion projects in Paris, Apolline and Gauthier were invited to Shanghai, to undertake a residency at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in 2015. Post-residency, they were given carte blanche by Hermès-founded house Shang-Xia to develop a series of limited-edition objects. After nearly two years spent immersed in Chinese culture, they relocated to Brussels in 2018 to join Zaventem Ateliers, a contemporary guild project gathering its denizens under the banner of excellence, in the collective pursuit of new fields of expression through collectible design.
Their inaugural research theme The Passage of Time yielded seminal works like Hypnos, System, and Umbra, which blur the lines between object and performance. Thereafter, an inspirational journey to the United States led them to explore the graphic world of neon signage, resulting in urban-coded pieces like Light Fan, White Night, and Snack.
Their latest collection delves into the visual world of the fairground, featuring pieces like Flasher, Golden Nuggets, and Candy Crush, which translate the electric allure and effervescent atmosphere of ephemeral fairground structures into their signature radical minimalist style.
