In the turquoise blue… of Venice, Johan Creten’s ‘La Laguna’ illustrates the passage of time. Submerged in translucent wax, a bronze Venus reveals herself as the candle burns… as the hours pass. Aesthetes and explorers of all stripes can purchase ‘La Laguna’, a limited-edition work of art created for Diptyque’s Le Grand Tour to mark the Maison’s 60th birthday.
Curious, open, sensitive to the beauty and cultures of the whole world: such were Desmond Knox-Leet, Yves Coueslant and Christiane Montadre, the three amateur aesthetes at the origin of diptych. Perpetuating the philosophy of the founding trio, diptych’s view of the world has continued to be enriched by multiple collaborations. In 2021, for its sixty years, the House demonstrates this by inviting five internationally renowned artists to imagine an original creation as part of the Grand Tour, the penultimate part of this extraordinary year. A journey in 5 stopovers, 5 artists and 5 exclusive editions to discover from September 2021 in an exhibition in Paris and pop-ups around the world. Art and diptych are definitely linked.
From different cultures, disciplines and sensibilities, the artists on the Grand Tour map share a common interest in the other and what surrounds them. Their techniques and practices are plural, just like the destinations they have been invited to sublimate. How do they perceive them? And according to what contours? The answer in five artistic proposals to perfumes from elsewhere.
One of the artist is one of the greatest contemporary sculptors, a pioneer in his innovative use of ceramics and the first artist of Belgian origin to have had the honors of the Louvre Museum, in 2005: Johan Creten. The choice to entrust him with Venice, a city appreciated and often visited by the founders of diptych, was obvious. Also famous for his large allegorical bronzes, the artist based in Paris is a lover of nature, the art of perfume and Venetian bronzes, which he collects with passion. “Venice is the city of all fantasies, a mirage, a ghost, a mermaid, a city of brutal and vivid beauty, decadent and delusional. It is a territory of crossroads, multiple artistic influences but also the reality of a dense and complex economic world, of dynamism and decline”.
For diptych, he imagined a bronze sculpture, La Laguna, immersed in a candle 4 wicks of 1.5 kg in blue tinted glass, whose wax of a translucent green blue, reminiscent of the menacing Venetian waters of the acqua alta recently become clear, reveals the female icon. By burning, the candle with the perfume worked by Cécile Matton evoking the freshness of a vegetable garden with accentuated marine notes, releases the sculpture.
To the initial idea of the Venice vegetable garden, the artist wanted to add “the smell of the sea, the note of iodine, a light, indefinable, fresh smell like the wind that floats above the water when you pass ‘Torcello’ in ‘vaporetto’ and smell the kitchen and gardens. Seeming gradually to emerge from the waters, La Laguna symbolizes for the artist ‘the passage of time, the fragility of this ecosystem, the mystery’. A candle ‘memento mori par excellence’ that leaves, once used, the vivid trace of its passage via a limited edition printed in 24 copies to keep for a long time, a small object with an independent ‘life’, which makes you dream and calls out”.
Diptique’s La Laguna is available in 24 numbered editions at their website. Come into the beautiful world of Diptyque.
Yakymour 