Incollect Magazine - Issue 6

24 www.incollect.com He had his first show in 1991 with En Attendant les Barbares, the legendary Parisian design gallery that launched Garouste & Bonetti and Eric Schmitt. He was 29 at the time and the youngest artist then attached to the gallery. He formed an important friendship with Frederic de Luca, one of the co-founders of the gallery who helped advise and guide him, and over the decades built up an impressive repertoire of designs that includes his Cloud Tables with lacquer interior, the Adam and Eve Lamps, the Drop Leaf Cabinet, Torquemada Console Table, the bronze and oak Odalisque Coffee Table, and his iconic lighting design, the Leda Floor Lamp. Part of his work is about understanding and appreciating the intrinsic properties of his materials. But part of it is also innocent, a release of pure creativity, a natural state of expression. “I try not to think too much and let feelings dictate the forms,” he says. He was inspired and encouraged to work this way by experiences at the psychiatric hospital where one day a week he supervises art and woodwork classes. “I have learned so much from them [the patients] about purity, innocence, and the unconscious. The mistakes they make are part of the identity of a piece, the humanity, and even if it has no purpose, or there is something that doesn't work well, it doesn't matter.” Jarrige believes the purity of the gesture is more important than the final form. “Form is subservient to the gesture, and is probably the most important thing in my work. It is the original creative act, an intuitive understanding of the purpose of the piece.” But how does this work for collectible design — it has to function. “Yes of course,” he says, “but this is part of the original gesture, not something that comes before or after it. The gesture embodies the function in its own unique and original way.” Goodman has been closely collaborating with Jarrige for the past 13 years and she knows what he means. “His work is Valerie Goodman’s home, Piermont, New York. Photo: Antoine Bootz