Lionel Jadot, Fractal Dragon, BE

Fractal Dragon, Jadot’s expansive graphic cabinet, reawakens an early 20th century Japanese ink drawing depicting a floating dragon. In traditional Japanese art, dragons are thought to be generous, benevolent forces that use their strength to do good for mankind. Jadot has constructed the cabinet’s depth at varying angles to mimic the accordion fold of a Japanese screen.

Further emphasizing this intricate geometry, Jadot has clad the sides and back of the cabinet in a complex parquet of exotic reclaimed wood slats. The slats, initially used as spacers to allow cut wood planks to breathe, date back from the 1950s and were being sold as firewood before Jadot rescued them for a higher use. A full surround of visual interest allows for the expansive cabinet to float in a room, its scale creating a unique focal point that can help dictate and define a space.

While not easily categorized by a singular style, Jadot’s work could most easily be recognized by his affinity for repurposed materials and his deft eye at creating harmony and balance out of the collision of disparate elements. The principle of reclamation has been relevant to Jadot from a young age. As a child in his father’s workshop, Jadot developed a keen attraction and respect for materials, coveting the bits of scrap wood and leather that would accumulate around the floor and had been deemed “fair game.” Today this manifests as both a philosophical and aesthetic tenet to his work. Manipulating materials that have been salvaged permeates the works with a sense of character, history, and humanity.

Working from a near photographic mental library of materials and influences, he is at once artist, tinkerer, and inventor. He explains, “What interests me is ideas passing though memory, and the influences mixing. Culture meeting subculture, mixing genre – from memory. I filled notebooks of ideas and with this approach I decided to achieve all that was in my notebooks. It is an exciting job; it’s more an expression, free of any constraints. But it is also a free reflection on design and art, and this fragile border that I love to cross in both directions.”