CHROMATICO
A quest for freedom, for playfulness, underlines all the work by Jaime Hayon. It seems effortless, spontaneous, even easy. No one would imagine how much thought is given to each piece, how much dexterity is needed to create them. All the freshness that is present in his drawings, the first step of his creative process, is preserved until the final pieces. How he achieves this is a bit of a mystery.
Especially since we learn about his meticulous attention to detail, his endless discussions with the craftsmen, the extensive research for making things in new and unexpected ways, the aim for perfection in execution. His new collection for Galerie Kreo is titled “Chromatico” and, as always in his work method, it is based in on exploration, this time for both color and materials, with special attention at the ability of color to transform an object, to become essential for its identity.
There are two main subjects in this body of work, each focused in a different noble material. In London the show will be devoted to a colorful group of vases made in hand blown Murano glass. These pieces are an evolution of a first collection called “Afrikando” (designed for Milwaukee Art Museum) and equally have an African inspiration: the masks, the tribal, the complexity of African aesthetics, is given an utterly different approach and is interpreted with new eyes. The hard rough finish of the African handmade wooden masks, for example, are the starting point of a series of delicate fragile vases, changing the perspective of what we might expect from them. Hayon is interested in the colorful side of Africa, its textures, the folklore… and he adds his personal playful touch to those characteristics. The contrast between the strong power of the African world and the use of glass as a material -a liquid way of working that adds flexibility and freedom- results in a range of pieces full of joy and sophistication. He has used a mix of strong colors like golden reds, greens or oranges with very subdued ones in contrast. The bases instead are made in precious marbles of delightful tones like Rosa Portogallo or Giallo Siena that complete the pieces and gives them physical and emotional stability.
The Paris gallery will be showing a second group of pieces related to the glass ones as they share the same interest for material and color, but in this case, devoted to marble. The central theme of the collection is the work in stone marquetry, a traditional craft that is part of our mediterranean culture, a subject that Hayon is always eager to explore with rigor and respect for techniques and materials. It consists of a range of tables of all sizes made in Vicenza and Verona, in which the hard material has been domesticated by Hayon through his signature soft lines and curves that gives the pieces a certain spongy feeling. The pared down geometric patterns of the table tops have a recurrent use of Hayon’s iconography, an abstract appearance with a figurative touch: the winking eye, the smile! Again, the colors of the marbles are central to this pieces, classic combinations like black and white mixed with bold shades of greens, reds and yellows which are reinforced for greater impact with lacquered wood bases, sometimes striped, probably a reference to the circus tent, a theme always present in his work and very close to his heart.
