The pictorial design of Fabien Cappello

We can turn each of the pieces of furniture and objects that Fabien Cappello creates in all directions. It will not necessarily seem exceptional in itself. We will note iterative motifs which stand out as elements of style. Like, for example, pop colors with contrasting harmonies, openwork surfaces and unexpected curves that sometimes seem to undermine ergonomics. We will notice a virtuoso inventiveness in the design ofByzantine motifsvery elaborate as in his already legendaryPersua carpet in hand-spun wool. But frankly, there is not necessarily a reason to put a stamp with your eyes closed certifying that “This is art”. So how does Cappello deserve to be called an artist?

Abstract as figurative, a painting immerses us in an impromptu way in a different universe but rich in an original coherence of its own. It is a microcosm governed by laws that do not apply in our reality. The goal is not necessarily to invite a round trip between this fiction and our reality to which we would return edified by the Montesquieu-like shift which would have allowed us to suddenly see our daily lives in a different light. No. Art is not a civics course. Its goal cannot be reduced to teaching us to love or hate the material, political and social context that surrounds us. It poses itself, in a more Houellebecquian way, and that is already quite sufficient, as constituting proof of the possibility of an island, of an elsewhere.

Fabien Cappello obviously aims to become our official supplier of this kind of exoticism. It does not design furniture or useful or decorative objects. Cappello creates immersive 3D paintings that are neither necessary nor desirable to enter. These are complete sets. Static theater stages in which the furniture is the somewhat Beckettian actors.

This shows all the magic of the joyful and colorful but always tender style with which Cappello dresses the little complete kit universes that he creates. When we discover one of these eerie scenes, we naturally want to sit on these armchairs that are anything but discreet. We want to pass our palms over the top of the coffee tables to probe the melted material in the background with an outrageous pattern even if perfectly geometric. It is precisely in this hypersaturated effect in terms of hues and patterns constantly oscillating between borderline and too much that all the genius of Cappello lies.

Fabien Cappello creates settings that we want to enter while knowing very well from the start that we absolutely will not want to stay there. This occasional immersion in a universe that denies reality with such intensity that it captures us and then rejects us has nothing to do with the all-out aestheticization of everyday life to which current fashionable design is engaged. This is most often consumed in spare parts. A little different world into which we enter, magnetized by its aesthetic and from which we emerge intact but changed... we generally call it a painting, a photo, a sculpture. In short, an object that is a work of art.

Legends:
Fabien Cappello – metate -17
Fabien Cappello Living-1