Lionel Jadot, Crushed Seat, BE

Crushed Seat, Jadot’s juxtaposed material assemblage, is a colossal manifestation of his unusual creative process. Constructed of reclaimed MDF that has been painted in vibrant colors and upholstered in a high performance canvas used in theater sets, the entire structure is held together with industrial clamps. The irregular shapes, unconventional assymetric form, and whimsical surfaces draw a comparison to the Memphis design movement of the 1980s. Like the Memphis movement, Crushed Seat is radical, playful, adventurous, and essentially a physical manifesto against what is traditionally considered “good taste.”

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.”