Modes & Travaux — POIL, une collection de pulls d’artistes imaginés par The Drawer — Galerie G-P & N Vallois — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: February 28 → April 11, 2020

With Caroline Achaintre, Pilar Albarracín, Studio Avecbrio, Cecilia Bengolea, Alain Bublex, Cléo Charuet, Idir Davaine, Guillaume Dégé, Emile Degorce-Dumas, Florent Dubois, Charlotte Gastaut, Jason Glasser, Dimitri Henri, Jakob Lena Knebl, José Lévy, Marie Macon, Elsa-Louise Manceaux, Pierre-Louis Mascia, Zhenya Machneva, Aurélie Mathigot, Alexandre Morgado, Flora Moscovici, Jérémy Piningre, Mario Picardo, Pierre Seinturier, Samuel Trenquier, Emma Vallois, Janna Zhiri.

POIL is a collection of artists sweaters founded by The Drawer in 2018. POIL is a project that mixes art and fashion in a simple and novel manner. No mass production here but unique pieces designed by artists who, for the most part, have never “practiced” the sartorial arts. Each guest artist and designer has received the same virgin model in merino wool inspired by the classic sailor’s sweater, trimmed, widened, shortened for the occasion and specifically made in a factory in Brittany. Everyone was able to work the sweater as they wished. Everyone was encouraged to draw, paint, sew, embroider, transform the object. The purpose is to create a work to wear or to collect.

The thirty or so pieces created bear witness to the great pleasure the artists had in experimenting with this medium and the seriousness with which they did. For some, POIL was an opportunity to test new techniques and materials (carded wool for Samuel Trenquier, textile painting for Pierre Seinturier, tufting gun for Emile Degorce-Dumas, sewing and molding for Janna Zhiri, embroidery for Charlotte Gastaut, etc.). Others took the opportunity to confirm and adapt their know-how (crochet for Aurélie Mathigot, patchwork for Marie Macon, acrylic for Idir Davaine, Indian ink for Jérémy Piningre, raffia for Caroline Achaintre, etc.). Their sweaters resemble their works, displayed facing each other in the exhibition; they are their textile extensions. The selection of drawings assembled underlines their close relationship: we find the same scriptures, the same patterns, the same spirit from one to the other, with a few variations. Modes and works meet and converge.

With POIL, the editorial and curatorial platform devoted to drawing The Drawer, pursues the whimsical vein and the desire to open up and mix the genres that fundamentally characterize its approach. Contemporary art, design and fashion are found on the same walls of the gallery. POIL deconstructs and removes labels. “POIL “for the wool, the raw material of the project, and for the word itself, idiosyncratic as we like it.

Barbara Soyer and Sophie Toulouse