Zaha Hadid — Liquid Glacial — Galerie Mitterrand — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: November 10, 2012 → January 12, 2013

JGM. Galerie presents the first solo exhibition of the Iraqi architect and designer Zaha Hadid at JGM. Galerie.

Essential figure of the deconstructivist movement, Zaha Hadid is known for her practical and theoretical works through which she has been for the past thirty years exploring shapes, within the fields of architecture, urbanism and design. Her style is characterized by a taste for the tracery of straight and curved lines, sharp angles, juxtaposed plans that make her work complex and light at the same time. She uses the most innovative technologies to cross and make architecture and nature interact, integrating in her different projects natural topography together with man-made systems.

Famous for her work as an architect, Zaha Hadid also designs pieces of curvy furniture, airy and very contemporary, which illustrate her taste for new technologies and her fierce perfectionism. Her works, made by the best craftsmen in the world and thanks to the most innovative techniques, give life to surprisingly dynamic forms and redefine everyday objects as abstractions. This leads to a new interpretation of the domestic universe.

JGM. Galerie presents the tables of the Liquid Glacial (2012) series that evoke moving ice patches, prolonged by legs that recall whirlpools. The result of a long creative process — "this idea of glaciers and ice is something we have been exploring for quite some time", says Zaha Hadid — the “glaciers” were produced in Italy from a new type of acrylic resin and link the main themes of her work: rigorous forms, aesthetical fluidity and innovative techniques.

Elements of the famous series Dune Formations (2007) and Stardune (2010) are also exhibited. They put traditional Cartesian geometry to test: they defy the horizontal and vertical surfaces usually used by the furniture craftsmen and add an unseen three-dimensional aspect. These pieces, shelves, coffee tables and consoles, were inspired by the shapes of sand dunes; generated by a series of common topological rules, they were created thanks to the use of high-tech 3D modeling techniques. Their organic lines made of undulating curves suggest many possible uses.

Born in Iraq in 1950, Zaha Hadid studied in Lebanon and in London. She then worked for the Office for Metropolitan Architecture agency, where she collaborated with its founder Rem Koolhass. In 1980, she opened her own agency in London — Zaha Hadid Architects — that nowadays employs 350 people. Among her many projects, one could mention the Aquatics Center of the 2012 London Olympic Games, the National Museum of XXI century art in Rome, or the CMA-DGM Tower in Marseilles. She has taught at Harvard University, at the University of Illinois, at the University of Columbia (New York) or at the University of Yale (Connecticut). She is the first woman laureate of the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 2004. Her work was the subject of a retrospective at the New York Guggenheim Museum in 2006: she is the second architect to have had this honor after Frank Gehry.