Toiletpaper at Galeries Lafayette
Galeries Lafayette celebrated with a big party the opening of the special project by Toiletpaper. The creative duo Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari spiced up the Galeries Lafayette store with a display window sequence, an exhibition at Galerie des Galeries and an inflatable golden Eiffel Tower with two giant eggs suspended beneath the dome.
Toiletpaper has found in Gufram and Seletti two outstanding partners to design unconventional and ironic homeware and furniture.
The link between Toiletpaper and Seletti finds its raison d'être in accessibility, with the pairing of the artistic images of the magazine with everyday materials available at affordable prices. The Seletti wears Toiletpaper collection consists of tin tableware and porcelain plates, along with umbrellas, mirrors, and coffee tables.
The creative genius of Cattelan and Ferrari chose, then, Gufram to produce furniture in the irreverent pop spirit of radical design in a contemporary key. The items play with the idea of objects with well known features reinterpreted in an unexpected way; plus, they use the softness which is typical of the polyurethane foam, mixed with the endless possibility offered by Guflac – the special varnish patented by the brand – to create a tactile short-circuit.
For the window sequence, Toiletpaper has created 11 images which are featured in stunning displays in each of the windows on Boulevard Haussmann. Summer, Paris and Romance set the tone. Among the images, the Eiffel Tower on holiday on a deserted island, or a «store-like woman» surrounded by a multitude of distinctively Toiletpaper objects. The artistic duo offers visitors a witty, food inspired take on France’s beloved capital, in a flourish of summery colours with hints of blue, white and red, culminating in the giant original installation of the inflatable Eiffel Tower, golden and suspended, under the dome.
For the Galerie des Galeries exhibit, Toiletpaper is playing around with the setting. Store, exhibition space and gathering place all in one, the project is a collaborative effort with Seletti and Gufram, who together with the duo have produced a variety of everyday objects tinged with their characteristic surrealistic images.
Cattelan and Ferrari explain: "We imagined our presence at Galerie des Galeries as platforms of experience where, depending on their needs, people can interface and participate by buying objects to the aesthetic code of the Toiletpaper world. It won’t be the mere enjoyment of images anymore, but a true tactile serotonin initiation: images become three-dimensional and can be brought home to lengthen this ecstasy rich in imagery. Each object will be contextualised in its domestic landscape and the various chapters – rooms – of this staging will render the surreal totality of the Toiletpaper modus vivendi, a lysergic dollhouse in scale 1 :1".
