Les Lalanne

Paul Kasmin Gallery is proud to announce Les Lalanne, an exhibition of works by Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne on view at 515 West 27th Street from March 26 – May 2, 2015. In a unique collaboration with renowned landscape architect Madison Cox, a longtime friend of the artists, the gallery will be transformed into a winding labyrinth featuring a range of both recent and historic sculptures.

Through a dramatic gated entry designed by Claude Lalanne, a series of navigable walls serve as the backdrop to a wide spectrum of Lalanne sculptures, including François-Xavier Lalanne’s towering bronze Génie de Bellerive, the artist’s homage to his close friends and colleagues Constantin Brançusi and Max Ernst. On making one's way through the exhibition one will encounter a version of the fabled "hall-of-mirrors" created for Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé’s Paris home in 1974. Here, Claude Lalanne’s Lustres hovers over thirteen mirrors, each elaborately entwined with bronze-cast flora and fauna. The exhibition will also include the iconic Pomme d’Hiver, a six-foot bronze sculpture of a perfect golden apple and Claude Lalanne’s most recent work, Choupatte (Moyen), a signature motif in her distinctly Surrealist oeuvre.
 
This exhibition will be accompanied by an equally special new book Les Lalanne: Fifty Years of Work, 1964-2015 – edited by critic Adrian Dannatt in Paris – featuring rare, never before seen images from the personal Lalanne archive as well as vintage photographs by Lomé, Guy Bourdin, François Halard and Jean-Philippe Lalanne. This publication will also boast interviews and testimonials from the extraordinary range of the Lalanne's friends, collaborators and collectors over the decades including; Laurence Graff, Peter Marino and Carla Fendi, architect Paul Chemetov, and cultural luminaries such as François de Ricqlès and Agnes Gund.

Claude Lalanne (b. 1924 in Paris, lives and works in Ury, France)  and François-Xavier Lalanne (b. 1927 in Agen, died 2008 in Ury, France), known individually and collectively since the 1960s as “Les Lalanne,” developed a unique mélange of inventive, practical, poetic and Surrealist sculptures. Most recently, Les Lalanne were the subject of a full-scale retrospective at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and an important public exhibition at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables, Florida.  Their work has also been featured on New York’s Park Avenue and in the sale of the collection of Yves Saint Laurent.  In addition to countless private collections, their works can be found in international institutions including the Cooper Hewitt Museum, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Kröller-Müller Museum, Netherlands; and the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris.
 
Madison Cox (b. 1958 in Bellingham, Washington) is renowned for creating some of the most coveted gardens for clients worldwide. Cox graduated in 1984 from Parson’s School of Design with a BFA in Environmental Design and has since worked on both private and public commissions including the Spring Garden at the French National Museum at the Château de Blérancourt. In addition to maintaining offices in New York and Morocco, Cox is Vice President of both the Foundation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent, Paris and the Foundation Jardin Majorelle, Marrakech.