BUREAU OF INNOVATION x CHARLES RIVA COLLECTION - REFRACT : Group Exhibition - Paris
The Charles Riva Collection and the Bureau of Innovation present REFRACT during Art Basel Paris. This presentation is a distinctive group exhibition with a curated selection of art and design. This exhibition explors movement, material and perception. Unfolding across two locations during Art Basel Paris, REFRACT brings together live performance, collectible design and contemporary art through a shared investigation into movement, material and perception.
Developed around a single curatorial proposition—that nothing passes through a moment unchanged—the exhibition explores how light, bodies, materials and images are continually transformed through experience.
In response to the curatorial theme of REFRACT, Bureau of Innovation presents a curated exhibition of collectible design alongside a selection of Post-War and Contemporary art from the Charles Riva Collection, curated in collaboration with Charles Riva and Holly Lucas. Rather than illustrating the performance, this presentation offers another expression of the same curatorial proposition, exploring how bodies, materials, objects and images are transformed through movement, time and perception.
Drawn from the Charles Riva Collection, works by Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Avedon, Christopher Wool, Daniel Richter, Cécile Defforey and others examine the body, image, memory and abstraction through photography and painting.
Alongside these works, Bureau of Innovation presents collectible design by Roham Shamekh, Sophie Dries, Kym Ellery, Tino Seubert, Rodrigo Garcia, Corpus Studio, William Guillon, Tim Vranken, G-iO Studio, Valerie Name and Agglomerati, among others. Working across diverse materials and processes, each designer explores the relationship between material, form and time, revealing objects shaped as much by process as by outcome.
Together, the two collections create unexpected relationships between artwork and object, image and material, permanence and ephemerality. Rather than existing as separate disciplines, art and design become parallel expressions of the same curatorial idea.
