It all started with a post on Instagram: "We welcome any items you no longer need...". An invitation that would go unnoticed, except that it is an art gallery asking for it, ready to receive any object at 75, rue Beaubourg, in the heart of Paris.

An old perfume, a forgotten T-shirt, a book read too many times: there are no rules except to avoid broken, dangerous or dirty objects - and to accumulate as much as possible before the arrival of the most anticipated art fair of the year. To enter one of the most anticipated installations at Art Basel Paris 2025, you don't need an invitation: all you need is an object you no longer use.

The occasion is Objets Trouvés, the collective work with which Harry Nuriev will transform the Petits-Augustins chapel inside the Beaux-Arts in Paris into a space of exchange and circulation. Supermarket boxes, perfectly lined up, will welcome objects brought by visitors: everyone will be able to leave something and take something else, in a gesture as simple as it is subversive.

Each contribution will be certified as a work of art and, at the end of the exhibition, all exchanges will flow into a catalog - paginated like a phone book - transforming an ephemeral act into a permanent archive.

Harry Nuriev

"I’ve always been fascinated by accumulation — and by the natural exchange, the instinct of trade — where we balance one another through sharing what we have: knowledge, energy, and the objects that surround our lives," Nuriev says.

His idea of Transformism -- as he calls his own aesthetic philosophy -- is a reflection on the changing value of matter, but also on the act of letting go.

"Another layer of this project comes from my research into the idea of letting things go — the understanding that not everything we desire is meant to stay with us. Sometimes we can simply… release it. Many things enter our lives without being truly needed, and by letting them go, we create space for transformation."

Harry Nuriev

In Objets Trouvés, he explains, art is not born of production, but of decision: "In this project, creation exists purely in the realm of ideas. An old object — a broken piece of iron, a torn fabric, a fragment of something forgotten — becomes art the moment you decide to call it so.."

Following Marcel Duchamp's radical manifesto, Nuriev joins the genealogy of those artists who turned every gesture into conceptual creation: "I want to remind myself — and everyone — that the world around us is the world of ideas. It is shaped by our perception and our decisions. And sometimes… that is all it takes."

Born in 1984 in Stavropol, today Nuriev lives and works in Paris. Founder of Crosby Studios, he is considered one of the most radical voices in contemporary design. His aesthetic-bold, essential, and deeply expressive-moves on the border between art and architecture, between irony and rigor. In 2026 he will receive the title of Designer of the Year from Maison&Objet, which will dedicate an immersive installation to him on the relationship between consumption, empathy and care.

In the meantime, as he awaits the opening of Objets Trouvés, he recounts his expectations with disarming simplicity:

"I don’t expect anything — except for people to feel present in the moment of exchange. I want them to enjoy, to find satisfaction in the simple act of letting go. I want them to discover, to encounter new things, and to remember that sometimes giving or exchanging is also a way of gaining."

"There is beauty in this movement — the beauty of chaos that I call 'Transformism'."