Design Miami/Basel 2015

On the occasion of the International Year of Light launched by UNESCO and after a first show at Design Miami/Basel in June, the Galerie Pascal Cuisinier has dedicated this exhibition to a solo show of the work of Jacques Biny, presenting an exceptional collection of his lighting pieces, the fruit of eight years of research.

Jacques Biny was one of the most important French lighting designers from 1950 to 1970. Unlike most designers, he also manufactured designs and worked in partnership with some of the best designers of the time, including MichelBuffet, Jean Boris Lacroix and Gustave Gauthier. Together, they set out to forge a new future for this field.

A graduate of the École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris, Jacques Biny settled in his home town of Valence inorder to practise his profession of interior designer. Confronted by a lack of light fittings on the sites he was working on,he decided to design his own, which he then offered to his clients. Following this experience, Jacques Biny returned toParis in 1950, founding his own contemporary light fittings production workshop, Luminalite, three years later.

Modern and pioneering, Jacques Biny produced a range of sophisticated light fittings for the home, using new materialssuch as perforated sheet metal and Perspex. With each stroke of his pencil, shapes morphed into radical new forms, mostly divested of their decorative function. In the 1960s, he was appointed lighting designer for large-scale projectssuch as major cinema, Le Palace and the Préfecture (administrative offices) of Valence and the shipyards of SaintNazaire.

For this year’s Design Miami/Basel, Pascal Cuisinier has decided to stage, in the most literal sense of the word, a show comprising of Jacques Biny’s finest creations. The stand has been designed in the same manner as a theatre, with black curtains in the wings and lighting inspired by director Robert Wilson’s work. A luminescent whitebackdrop à la James Turrell completes the display. 

This exhibition, organized by Galerie Pascal Cuisinier, took place from 16 to 21 June 2015 in Basel, before moving to Galerie Pascal Cuisinier’s exhibition space in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris, where it was shown from 27 June to 12 September 2015.