LVMH Métiers d’Art sponsors Thomas Mailaender exhibition at Tanneries Roux
© Thomas Mailaender, Mermaid, 2016. Photo : Alexandre Guirkinger
LVMH Métiers d’Art helps our Fashion houses protect and develop unique time-honored skills and sources of exceptional quality materials. It provides investment and long-term support for the best suppliers around the world, from France to Spain to Singapore. The underlying objective is to stimulate creativity and innovation that benefit the entire sector. This approach has led LVMH Métiers d’Art to create an artist-in-residency program to nurture fruitful dialogue between artisans and artists, thus inspiring innovation in the production processes employed by different sectors.
By actively supporting its suppliers, LVMH Métiers d’Art ensures long-term supply of exceptional quality raw materials while enriching the transmission of savoir-faire that has often been passed on for generations.
Aligned with the Group’s core values, LVMH Métiers d’Art stimulates creativity and innovation, cultivates a commitment to exceptional materials, and explores opportunities by nurturing dialogue among the different actors in a sector. This approach has led to the creation of the LVMH Métiers d’Art artist-in-residency program.
The first residency took place from January to June 2016 at Tanneries Roux, a tannery in Romans-sur-Isère in southeastern France acquired by LVMH in 2012. During his residency, French artist Thomas Mailaender created 30 works printed on leather. The pieces created during his residency are the fruit of exploring a mix between historical photographic processes and the most recent techniques for marking and printing on leather.
Thomas Mailaender’s work – which has been exhibited at prestigious venues including the Tate Modern, MoMA PS1 and FOAM Fotografiemusem – explores diverse forms of artistic expression including ceramics, photography, collages and installations. “LVMH Métiers d’Art gave me an absolutely fabulous opportunity to work with leather by drawing inspiration from an immersion into the amazing heritage and savoir-faire at Tanneries Roux,” says the artist.