HAINAUT.- After the La Villa Noailles in Hyères last summer and the ELAC in Lausanne very shortly thereafter, the monographic exhibition “Etapes” devoted to the work of Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec makes a stop at the Grand-Hornu. They chose to entitle this look at their work “Etapes (Stages)”.

This plural title with multiple meanings indicates the intention to show a process that, from inspiration to production, organises the always changing work of the designer. It is called Stages as well for this exhibition where for the first time they show a part of their process not revealed very much until now: the drawings. Not just those of the projects, but also those that fundamentally connect them to the raison d’être for things, that is little by little to construct a domestic landscape, their own… This moment has involved them in a plan for an exhibition and the realisation of a show for which one imagines that it is itself a stage in their work.

Ronan Bouroullec, born in 1971, and Erwan Bouroullec, born in 1976, have been working together for ten years. Their collaboration is an ongoing dialogue, nourished by their specific peculiarities and guided by their common requirements; currently they design for numerous industrial concerns such as Vitra, Kvadrat, Magis, Kartell, Ligne Roset, Issey Miyake and Cappellini.

The world of the Bouroullec brothers has always seemed rather close to the world of plants and minerals… Nature, its contemplation, the phenomena and the time necessary to comprehend them seem to play an important role. With the vision of the drawings shown in the exhibition this feeling is confirmed; it is supreme, it soars, it overhangs and defines an isolation bubble.