At the inaugural Longchamp Art Festival in Paris, we discover what it means to move

Upon entering Galerie Joseph, festival visitors were greeted by the gently undulating Mobile No. 3 by Xavier Veilhan. Suspended white and red semi-spheres made up an artwork both imposing but welcoming, an immediate visual representation of Longchamp’s art ethos. “At Longchamp, we have a really strong DNA of colour,” Sophie Delafontaine tells us, standing beneath said mobile. As the brand’s creative director and the driving force behind this first edition of Longchamp Art Festival, Delafontaine is uniquely placed to comment on the intersection of art and the brand. “Optimistic, joyful, but also simplicity, purity. This mobile from Xavier Veilhan shows exactly what I’m talking about—it is purity, simplicity, colourful, joyful, abstract, and you can imagine so many things looking at that.”

“I don't know if it's Longchamp who inspired my taste or my taste who inspired Longchamp, but yes, we are so linked,” Delafontaine laughs. For this first edition of the festival, she chose the theme ‘Movement’, expressed in installation, in dance, in play, in conversation. All over the gallery, walls, corners and spaces were filled with works that express the joy and meaning of movement. In a small nook, Damien Poulain created Bric à Bric, an interactive play area of colourful foam modules that can be built up and tumbled down. (When we looked in, some had been assembled in the form of a baby giraffe.) Behind a wave-like divider sits a pair of Thomas Heatherwick’s famous Spun Chair, expressing motion even when doing something as sedentary as sitting.

“Movement is for me the expression of energy, and it’s also the lifestyle of our customers: active women, dynamic women, women in movement,” Delafontaine says. “It’s part of the history of the company—in the ’50s our father started to develop luggage, the best companion to your movement—and also it’s the mindset of the company, because in nearly 80 years, the company has always been in movement, in evolution, from when our grandparents started the tobacco store in Paris.”

“The brand needs a lot of energy,” Jean Cassegrain agrees. “As a company, we are trying to be agile, always on the move. Even the format of this festival is very agile. It’s not like a museum that we built for 50 years. It’s only three days and then it's gone. I also like the fact that it's a format that's very agile. Movement is really the key value that is expressed here.”

The festival was co-curated by Olivier Bassuet and Sophie Delafontaine and while the works are wide-ranging, there’s a common thread: a joyful use of colour, and abstract forms that invite imagination and interpretation. “Art is emotion for me, and the idea is that it helps you to imagine what you want yourself, what you see yourself,” Delafontaine says. “The more abstract the art, the more it allows you to imagine something and to go in your imagination.”

In Munpei, Korean artist Soo Kyoung Lee created a series of contemporary artpieces inspired by an ancient tradition, abstracting traditional wooden name plaques and turning them into colourful forms. Simone Pheulpin sculpted fabric into a fossil-like formation in Éclipse VI, using nothing but strips of cotton and pins. Caroline Hélain’s layered textile collages (that you may recognise from Longchamp fashion) appeared on the walls, as did dancer and visual artist Caroline Denervaud’s bold canvas Never Stop Playing, created in charcoal, chalk and milk proteins. Later in the day we were treated to an incredible performance piece by Denervaud, in which the artist danced and painted on the canvas, turning gestures into wild, bold swathes of colour.

“Artists give us ideas. They make us dream,” Cassegrain says. “The artists help us to go to new places. They open our horizons.” All around him, visitors are streaming through the light-filled space, taking in the scale of enormous canvases, leaning into tiny ones.

“It’s really a commitment from the company to support creativity,” Delafontaine says, “but also a way to make the public discover, be curious. We hope they want to dig a little bit and discover new artists and artwork. We have some artworks that are very major, from some of the top artists in the world, but we also have really upcoming artists, artists that nearly no one knows. I’m very happy with this mix, because for me, behind each artwork, there is an artist with his emotion and his talent.”

NOW READ

YTL Cement executive director Rachel Yeoh on art, purpose and building a legacy that lasts

Timur Flores finds power in letting go, turning self-acceptance into a song and strength into art

Where dessert is an art: must-visit cities for pastry lovers