Third part of the report about the exhibition Betes de Style/Animals With Style, at the MUDAC museum in Lausanne. This time i’ll cover two sections of the show: Zoomorphism and The Animal and the End.

Zoomorphism focused on the animal references in design and architecture. Papero designed in 1971 by Cini Boeri was the only “old” design work i saw at the museum. I wish there had been more of them. I’m only visiting design fairs and exhibitions for a couple of years and if i noticed the craze for animal-inspired designed (and sometimes for a particular species, like cows which were everywhere a few years ago), i have sometimes wondered if it’s something new.

Tube shoes for Bird People and Dog shoes

There were a few acquaintances like a specimen of iBride‘s “pet furniture”; a video of Eelko Moorer‘s fabulous Bird People; the Cow Benches designed by Julia Lohmann (of the Tripe lighting fame) to remind us of the gap that exists between living animals and the products and materials we obtain from them, Wieki Somers‘ eccentric High Tea Pot made of porcelain and fur and shaped like a buffalo head.

Whippet bench and Rabbit Chair

I found Radi Designers‘s Whippet Bench totally irresistible.

Other findings: Noaki Takizawa (SANAA)’s Rabbit Chair (which slightly horrified me because the ears were made with animal’s skin); Céline Cléron‘s Travestis, mannequins shaped like ruminants whose corpulence contrasts with the stereotype of what a model’s silhouette should be like; the very puzzling but quite fun dog-boots photomontage by Margot Quan Knight…

Another section, named The Animal and the End, was probably one of my favourites (due to my obsession with gruesome taxidermy art projects i guess). The collection shows how much the treatment reserved for domestic animals differs from that reserved for animals in the wild or in agricultural context, highlighting the paradoxes of present-day society, in which the same man is capable of love and of “bestiality� towards animals.

Hunting Accident

The work of Pascal Bernier, Accidents de Chasse (Hunting Accidents) illustrates the idea quite well: he wrapped with bandages animals, not pets but the kind of animals whose well-fare is not regarded as “important”: hunted creatures and battery animals. He also showed an alluring Tableau de Chasse, a hunting trophy made up and sexed up like a woman, switching the subject to other types of relationship between the “stronger” and the “weaker” sex.

Tableau de Chasse and Le Souillot

Nicolas Darrot’s Le Souillot made me laugh a lot. Bad idea. The museum guard came in the room to see what the buzz was about and reminded me “for the last time, lady!” that taking pictures is not allowed. The trophy head was in fact animated and talked (never managed to understand what it was saying.)

Also part of the selection: Art Orienté Objet‘s knitted heads of endangered animals (see also their manipulated tattoos), Big Game’s Moose, etc.

Animals with Style (part 1) – Chimera.
Animals With Style (part 2) – Taming.
My images on flickr.