Furniture, Objects and Imagery from Gallery Utopie

Chairs by François Arnal for Atelier A.

Here’s some fantastic imagery that I picked up thanks to Gallery Utopie (or Utopia in English) who sells and showcases different art/design pieces, the chairs in-particular seem to be quite a focal point. What I like about these guys is that they’ve got an individual taste and it definitely sets their gallery/shop apart from anyone else’s, plus a lot of these objects I’ve never even seen before. Which is pretty rare for me considering I spend half my life floating around the web, sad I know.

Gallery Utopie is actually based in Paris and although they don’t have a storefront, the website acts as this, you can access the stock through appointment and can enter their office to view the items if you like. They’re looking to represent the mood of an era, in-particular three decades of prolific creation, the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s. Slightly strange that they’ve picked such a broad array of dates, lets be honest there’s quite a lot of stuff you can pick over 30 years. But what they’ve done is focus on design that sticks to their taste and ideology which makes it work overall, otherwise I think it would fall apart and wouldn’t make sense.

Recently one thing that I’ve been enjoying is this architectural and grid like forms in chairs, I think I’ve mentioned a few times before about the children’s chairs. But I always think these classic shapes like the one shown above are quite inviting on the eye. In some ways they look a bit off kilter and don’t look that structurally sound to sit on but they’re almost pieces of art that look architecturally brilliant and quite fascinating. Another aspect I’m looking into as a designer is the playful side of the work, the stuff that’s full of character and has that quirky nature about it. This falls back to the kid’s design again, in the middle of this post we have a shot of a piece called Balancelle by Guy Bouchet crated in 1970, I thought it was great how this see saw worked and functioned. So simple and it takes away all unnecessary elements that we usually see in the playground such as metal bars etc.

As you can probably guess this gallery has plenty more objects to view on their website, I’ve just picked out a selection of my favourites, so for more please head that way through the link below. If you’re interested in the background of this gallery I found a great interview with owner Edouard Bernard here.

www.galerieutopie.com

Standard chair by Jean-Louis Avril, 1967.

Charles Zublena Deck Chair.

François Arnal for Atelier A Armchair.

Desk object by Bruno Munari.

Children’s Chair by François Arnal for Atelier A.

Kid’s Chairs by Jean-Louis Avril.

Balancelle by Guy Bouchet, 1970.

Wimpy chair and ashtray by Roger Tallon.

Ceramic piece by Marie-Madeleine Boucraut.

Jean-Pierre Laporte researches.

Empruntes, ed° Atelier A, 1970.

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