Paris, France — Pigments and chalk, bamboo and silk thread. It is a world of simplicity in earth tones. A world of calm evoking a life force of sorts. This world is unfolding at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris in the foundation’s luminous setting surrounded by a glorious garden focusing on local, natural vegetation. These are the works and visions of Bijoy Jain, the founder of Studio Mumbai. The Fondation Cartier has invited the Indian architect to create an exhibition offering up a space for dreaming and contemplation all the while enjoying a dialogue with architect Jean Nouvel’s landmark building in glorious glass. 

This isn’t your usual shape and form of an art exhibition, it is a vision, a total creation, an exhibition to be lived, rather, as an experience, a space of contemplation, an exhibition created from the rhythm of breathing and so its name: Bijoy Jain/Studio Mumbai, Breath of an Architect, which has been especially created for the institution by Bijoy Jain. Here the natural elements converge: wood, brick, stone and water, shaped by hand. “Civilisation is built on an aqueous footing, a world that is in a constant flux, a culture continually in an ebb and flow. Air, light and water is our essential construct. Man in Nature – Nature in Man is indivisible,” notes Bijoy Jain. Born in Mumbai in 1965, Bijoy Jain graduated in architecture from Washington University in St. Louis, USA, in 1990. He worked in Los Angeles and London before returning to India in 1995, where he founded Studio Mumbai. 

The visitor is greeted by a range of Naza Battu, devotional sculptural elements or « guardians against the evil eye », that are scattered about at the entrance of the Fondation Cartier. There is a particularly eye-catching Naza Battu rising up in the foundation’s natural garden that surrounds the building. On a suggestion from Hervé Chandès, general exhibition curator and Fondation Cartier’s artistic managing director, Bijoy Jain has also invited Chinese painter living in Beijing Hu Liu and Turkish-born Danish ceramist living in Paris Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye to join him in creating the exhibition. They bring their own earthy materials to the show, notably ceramics for Siesbye and graphite for Hu Liu.

The Bijoy Jain exhibition is running until April 21st at the Fondation Cartier. Conferences, guided tours, performances, concerts and workshops are all on the agenda. The foundation is housed in a beautiful glass building designed by the architect Jean Nouvel and which can also be visited on set days. Weather permitting the snack bar is located in the Fondation Cartier’s unique garden. ©Trish Valicenti for The Gourmet Gazette. 261 boulevard Raspail, 75014, Paris. + 33 (0) 1 42 18 56 50. https://www.fondationcartier.com/en/