This French Artist-Designer Harnesses Nature In Her Whimsical Works

Every year for the past decade, Perrier-Jouët champagne has unveiled its collaboration with a contemporary artist that the House’s Creative Director, Axelle de Buffévent, has commissioned to revisit its extraordinary heritage. The latest in an ever-growing line-up is Paris-based French artist, architect and designer, Garance Vallée. After Perrier-Jouët brings these contemporary interpretations of Art Nouveau to fairs and exhibitions around the world, they find a permanent home at the Maison Belle Époque in Épernay, where they dialog with the brand’s historic Art Nouveau collection – the largest private collection of French Art Nouveau in Europe. “For Garance Vallée, Man is in nature, and nature is in Man – a notion that resonates especially strongly with Maison Perrier-Jouët, which has cultivated a relationship of symbiosis with nature since 1811,” states de Buffévent.

Vallée’s series of “Planted Air” sculptures for Perrier-Jouët – three sets of 10 pieces each – is a microcosm symbolizing her vision of “one nature”, in which all life forms make up a single entity. A reinterpretation of the ecosystem of the Champagne vineyard, each twisting wrought iron sculpture, hammered by metalworker Joël Guillaume, is shaped like a vine stock reaching up into the air, which is embedded in a solid block of limestone hand-sculpted by Art Project evoking the chalk-rich Champagne terroir. Mirrors reflect the environment surrounding the sculptures, allowing for an immersive experience in which visitors are invited to weave their way around them, as if walking amidst the vines, and question their relationship to the living world. I sit down with her to discuss her creative journey, her love of nature and her collaboration with Perrier-Jouët.

You were born in Paris in 1993. Tell me about your background.

My father, Kriki, is a painter, and my mother is an art agent. I have always been in a very open artistic environment. I used to fall asleep as a child to the sound of my father’s brush on the wall. I don’t think I chose to become an artist. It’s more like something inside you that grows and needs to come out at some point.

What was your breakthrough project that brought you recognition from the design community?

It was really in 2018, shortly after I graduated from architecture school that I had my first big project. At the time, I was drawing, painting and making a lot of models already that I showed on social media. Martina Gamboni, who owns the Strategic Footprints agency, immediately saw in my interior drawings a probable volume construction. She gave me carte blanche for my first Milan Design Week, which allowed me to have beautiful articles in AD, Vogue and Milk that were a springboard for me.

What is the most important consideration when you first start creating a design?

I always think about the human. I find that many architectural projects today are dehumanized when we are building for living organic bodies.

Take me through your creative process.

I am very guided by experimentation. I like to test and explore several directions. I don’t have a typical pattern of creation. Ideas really come from everywhere: a material, a color, an encounter, a book…

What is your relationship with nature?

My name is not Garance for nothing. My mother gave me this name of a flower, being very attached to the earth. Part of my family comes from the southwest of France, where I spent a lot of time in the forest or playing with what nature gave me.

How did the collaboration with Perrier-Jouët come about and what values do you share with the brand?

This collaboration was done in a very organic way with great respect for my ideas and my creations. The common discourse of combining art and nature has really been a strong anchor of the project.

Tell me about the “Planted Air” sculptures you created for Perrier-Jouët and what you were trying to achieve.

“Planted Air” is really the transcription of my discovery of the vineyards in Champagne and the terroir of Perrier-Jouët. The Maison Belle Époque was an inexhaustible source of references. The use of wrought iron like the Art Nouveau entry gate of the Maison is one of them. The stone that forms the base of the sculptures is limestone, the same stone that forms the basement and cellar of the house. I invite the viewer to come and walk through this field of vines as a real immersion in a world where man and nature meet without hierarchy.

Describe the limited-edition box you created for the Perrier-Jouët Blanc de Blancs champagne.

The drawing is inspired by a graduation from the earth to the sky, like a thread stretched between the species I represented, as if each being came from the same cell and that it was a continuous metamorphosis that gives us the stone, the leaf and the bird. This verticality is also a reference to the champagne bubble and the vivacity of Perrier-Jouët wines.

You have collaborated with Nike, Lacoste, Maison Martin Margiela, Elitis and Le Bon Marché. Why are collaborations important to you?

It’s always a new challenge to work with brands that already have a history, to be inspired by their background and to be able to project it on our own world. This allows me to keep my practice wide open and explore the possibilities of my craft.

What are the greatest challenges you face when creating your designs?

We always have this desire to create something new. The important thing is to remain anchored in what we are and what we do. The challenge is to reinvent ourselves with each project, while keeping a strong guideline that characterizes our esthetic.

What message do you hope to convey through your art at the end of the day?

I hope to bring a sort of new way of seeing things, a new thinking in our relationship to nature and humankind.