royal-fantasy

Southway Studio is a curatorial structure and art production workshop founded by Emmanuelle Luciani, artist, curator and art historian. Through Southway Studio, she conceives global exhibitions and installations, which are embodied as total artworks. Bella Hunt & Ddc, a Franco-American sculptural duo, practice ceramics and stucco, with a double perspective of friction between contemporary art and the decorative arts, and formal historical rereadings. For 'Royal Fantasy', Southway Studio summons the spectrums of the past by following in the footsteps of Louis XIII, and the meeting of Nordic and Italian styles. From the proto-baroque under Richelieu to the neo-gothic of the 19th century, through the twirling rocaille of Louis XV, ‘Royal Fantasy‘ is an acidic rereading of aristocratic splendor combined with fantasy and pop references. Memories of forms, the works of Bella Hunt & Ddc are tributes and formal crystallizations, born from the sedimentation of history and stylistic accumulations, haunting this historical walk. Sculpted as if in a cloud, the fireplace, dressed in a drapery, is the fruit of a slow historical sedimentation, a patient accumulation of successive contributions from the history of art. This homage to the ceremonial fireplaces of the seventeenth century is invented as a synthesis between baroque clouds and an old school Chevrolet grille. This meeting between the motifs of aristocratic pomp is found in the aluminum shield-calendars and their sharp chrome flames, or in 'Henri II 2040', a cyber-punk evocation of a tournament helmet, whose stake would be decided as well on horseback as on a bronze and neon motorcycle. This piece of armor, which could be found in a ceremonial room or in a duke's treasure, where banners and carpets of Jenna Kaës meander, is next to ceramics and vases that transcend and hybridize times and forms. Aquatic creations are mixed with historical rereadings, under the phantasmagorical whispers of fiction and fantasy. ‘The Atlantean Urn', its eel handles and its foot imprisoned in sargassum, seems to come from Armide's boudoir. These historical wanderings and visual fantasies continue in the loose undulations of the stucco furniture (console, coffee table, stool), whose neo-classical repertoire blends with otherworldly motifs.