This is not the first time that matali crasset has worked in tandem with the gallery owner Nadine Gandy. Already in 2002, the two collaborated on the fab (from the French “fabrique”) series, a project highlighting their shared interest in exchanges, encounters and crossovers between the two disciplines. Indeed, one of matali crasset’s main preoccupations is the decompartmentalization of design and contemporary art.

The fab series is structured into three collections of objects produced, in limited editions, using materials related to the domestic realm—as their name indicates, respectively glassfab, waxfab and soapfab. Requiring the sort of craftsmanship that our present-day economic model tends to devalue, these materials, as well as wood and ceramic, are condemned to disappear in the near or far future. Fab hopes to contribute to their preservation. Moreover, the series sees itself as a hub of exchange among the protagonists on today’s design and contemporary creation scenes, as a link in a utopian vein. To this end, matali crasset and Nadine Gandy set about inviting creators among their circle of acquaintances to work with successively glass, wax and soap in designing their highly original objects. In 2003, the mudac acquired the glassfab series — a collection of 15 glass objects created by Volker Albus, Olgoj Chorchoj, matali crasset, Fabrice Gygi, Joseph Grigely, Jakob + MacFarlane, Stéphane Magnin, Mathieu Mercier, Yves Netzhammer, Bruno Peinado, Tobias Rehberger, Denis Santachiara, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Maxim Velcovsky.

A selection of these fifteen objects is on display in parallel to, and in the same gallery as, the "In vino veritas" exhibition at Mudac, Lausanne (until 10 October).

Pictures © Patrick Gries