Patrick Norguet Dialogues

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An icon of French design revisits his 20-year career with an art book
masterfully illustrated by the fashion photographer Alistair
Taylor-Young



A designer with an atypical background, Patrick
Norguet has a privileged relationship with both the production tool and
the beauty of shapes. Harnessing his sense of colors, formal reserve,
elegant purity, and steadfast quest for comfort, his work is the direct
legacy of the canons of Nordic design, challenged by a fair dose of
humor that embodies the object.His career took a lasting turn in 2000
when Giulio Cappellini noticed his famous Rainbow Chair, which is now
featured in the collection of the MOMA in New York. Since then, he has
been drawing for major designers such as Capellini, Poltrona Frau,
Cassina, Tacchini, Hermes, Tolix, Artifort, Pedrali, and Ethimo.

"Whom for? What for? How?"
By answering these essential questions, Norguet humbly assumes the
defining role of the industrial designer, nourished by a practice he
experiences as an exploration of different forms of company cultures. "Without
going as far as to imply that my work is political, my ultimate goal
remains the creation of a product that functions. A fair, honest product
in line with the sociology of its era." Norguet primarily sees
design as a collective and innovative approach in which his assembled
creations become alive. Today, he shares the birth of 60 of his
creations in a radically magnificent book. A work designed as an
original photographic work, a poetic and dreamlike storyboard which,
chapter after chapter, questions the relationship between the table of
laws and the semantics of the object world. From its creation process to
its aesthetical acme, the object takes shape, embodying multiple
scenarios in the course of a vibrant visual epic, witnessing to all its
possible interpretations and lives.
menej