When La Prairie Met Cyril Lancelin: When Nature, Science and Beauty Collide

The French artist uses structural sculptures made of geometric shapes to make incursions into space

La Prairie commissioned Cyril Lancelin to create their latest installation, 219 Spheres, made of 26 columns of golden steel spheres. By interacting with the artwork, the viewer experiences volumes and colour.

“The repeating and aligning spheres evokes perfection and purity. Its surface captures the light in an identical fashion, irrespective of its position. This form transcribes a communion between nature and technology” states Lancelin.

The mathematical poetry and molecular formula for beauty, these spheres appear to emerge from the floor in an ascension, defying gravity. This emergence echoes the very principle of creation itself, an allegory that celebrates life.

Structured with precision, viewers can enter the installation and experience it kinetically. In the reflections of the golden pillars, the image of the viewer rebounds infinitely, provoking the questioning of one’s perspective.

As aesthetic as it is complex, the work resembles the perfect fusion of conceptual and technical thinking. In his works, there is a genuine mastery of space and rhythm inherited from his years of architectural practice.
219 Spheres is magnified by its sense of the essential. Everything seen and unseen is meaningful.

With his structures suspended in space, between void and solid, Lancelin questions the balance of things and the movements that govern all forms of life.

The fundamental motif of 219 Spheres is twofold: the artist aims to capture a moment of beauty while measuring space and time. Time is frozen in the golden reflections of the spheres, creative metaphors for the golden caviar beads from La Prairie’s iconic collection. For La Prairie and the artist, innovation and science are placed in service to elegance.

Cyril Lancelin began his career at an architectural agency. His work constructing virtual 3D models of structures led to his interest in art. Lancelin explains, “My earliest projects were inspired by Japanese traditional and contemporary architecture, with the work of people like Sou Fujimoto and Kazuyo Sejima. I started building fictional architectural creations: houses, where the walls are not solid, but comprising juxtaposed spheres, as with the House Hemi project. This had the effect of creating transparency and interstices within spatial divisions.” Thus, began the shift from the field of architecture to art.

Lancelin comments, “The idea of a transition, of a space that we pass through, is very important to me.” His work is about allowing oneself to be pervaded by the vibrations of colour.

Among the artist’s geometric vocabulary, spheres are his preferred form. Aligned, stacked, or dispersed, they become extrapolations of atoms. They connect the infinitely small to the infinitely vast, inviting a comparison with molecular structures as much as with the constellations of planets. This lets a whole host of spiritual, philosophical, or technological symbols emerge. 

The immersive installation will be exhibited at Village Royal, one of Paris’ most prestigious passageway which reinforces La Prairie’s quest to educate about the importance of art by making it accessible to a wider public.

The public artwork, an immersive artistic exploration of The Emergence of Life, will be revealed at Village Royal from October 23 to November 4, 2020.