ALEXANDRE BIAGGI

After starting out at “les Puces”, Alexandre Biaggi opened a boutique in the rue Jacob in the 6th arrondissement in Paris in 1989, selling 19th and 20th century furniture and art objects.
In 1996 he moved from this address to much bigger premises in the same district at 14, rue de Seine. Here he devoted himself to his real passion, the emblematic figures of 20th century decorative art. In his gallery can be found the most beautiful works of Jean-Michel Frank, André Arbus, Jacques Adnet, Paul Dupré-Lafon, Serge Roche, Jean Royère, Jacques Quinet and more.
In parallel with his antiques business, Alexandre Biaggi gradually developed an interest in contemporary art and over the years his boutique featured a collection created exclusively for him by Hervé van der Straeten, a floor lamp by Patrick Naggar which became a “must” and a few lamps he designed himself.
This growing enthusiasm led him to devote an entire exhibition last year to the lamps of Mauro Fabbro, who he met in Milan. It was an instant success. He sold almost the entire collection of astonishing parchment and ironwork lamps.
This exhibition marked a new step in Alexandre Biaggi’s career. He decided that from now on, alongside the furniture by 20th century creators displayed in his gallery, he would present the work of his contemporaries. “My work as an antique dealer fascinates me, but I discovered that working with living artists is just as interesting. I can participate in the creative process, which is very exciting. Moreover the craftsman’s touch is always visible in the pieces I exhibit. Skill and quality of work remain my main concern. ”
This exhibition demonstrates this, presenting the work of three creators, Patrice Dangel, Simone Crestani and Mauro Fabbro, who is back to show us another facet of his talent.

SIMONE CRESTANI

Simone Crestani was born in Marostica in 1984 and started his career in the workshop of Massimo Lunardon in 2001. Fascinated by glasswork, its potential, its grace and its strength mingled with fragility, he created glasses and vases unlike any others.
Very quickly inspiration began to dominate the merely functional aspect of the object and his creations became veritable sculptures.
He gives us an example in this exhibition with twenty or so glass trees, created in his workshop in Vicenza.
These bonsais have long, very poetic, wonderfully decorative twisting branches. “I see them as people,” explains Alexandre Biaggi. “Each has its own personality, as though they are inhabited.”
These really are works with a soul. Simone Crestani quietly confesses that it is also a homage to his father, Roberto, a cabinet-maker and great collector of bonsais. A way of continuing the tradition of an age-old skill - with elegance.

PATRICE DANGEL

Patrice Dangel trained at the Ecole Boulle in Paris and began work at the famous Valsuani foundry. His talent for carving quickly enabled him to become a restorer of bronze art. However, his time at the Beaux Arts also fired him with creative enthusiasm which he began to express in the 1980's.
The decorative articles he designs are quite naturally made of bronze. This is his favourite material. He likes its austerity, but also, paradoxically its malleability and especially the richness of its patinas, with their nuances and depth.
To define his style, we could say that he reconciles past and present. His works reveal a highly-controlled modernity, their lines taken from the classical register but at the same time flirting with a rustic, wild side, and this imaginative facet liberates the formal aspect. “It is often said that my inspiration comes from primitive art, but I would say it is rather more from Scythian art...”
This is illustrated in this exhibition by a pedestal table with its almost "barbaric” legs and golden top which is in fact a painting set between two sheets of Perspex, like a glass-painting, and which reminds us of molten gold! His lamp is even more astonishing, with its rough bronze base and its raw plaster lampshade, a real sculpture. Finally his desk calls to mind highly sophisticated tribal furniture.
“The sculptural side of his creations with their ideal proportions and the fact that they are a limited, numbered series with only 8 of them produced makes them real collector’s items” comments Alexandre Biaggi.

MAURO FABBRO

Mauro Fabbro was born in Bollate near Milan in 1973. It was during his years of study at the State Institute of Art in Monza that his passion for design, architecture and the visual arts was born.
His first job introduced him to the world of the famous cabinet-maker Pierluigi Ghianda, for whom he drew the illustrations for a catalogue devoted to his furniture and objects.
During the next few years, Mauro Fabbro studied architecture at university and continued his own personal research in the field of design.
Even before obtaining his diploma in 2005, he was already working with the architect Letizia Caruzzo and designing spectacular lamp-sculptures for residences in London and Gstaad.
In 2009 he went into partnership with Letizia Caruzzo and began to work in the Caruzzo-Fabbro firm of architects. In addition to their own activity, they also both work in collaboration with the Milan University "interior architecture laboratory”.
Last year, Mauro Fabbro exhibited his parchment and ironwork lamp-sculptures at Alexandre Biaggi’s gallery. Thanks to their lines, the choice of materials used and the refinement of their finish, these lamps are both an extension of the great tradition of decorative art of the 20th century and at the same time extremely modern.
After the success of this exhibition, Alexandre Biaggi invited Mauro Fabbro to present another aspect of his astonishing creativity, his colourful, modular carpets made of skins, consisting of three different sized pieces with irregular, organic shapes, which can be laid around the room as you wish for a unique colourful composition. “A new way of looking at the carpet" says Alexandre Biaggi with enthusiasm.
And as an allusion to his first exhibition Mauro Fabbro will also be exhibiting a parchment lamp but this time of a much more linear design.