The new Class One will be officially presented next March 11 at the Chaumet boutique located at 12, Place Vendôme, where the Maison will also host a three-week-long exhibition of Cecchini’s work.
It is the first time Chaumet has collaborated with a living artist in designing a timepiece. According to the house, this may be the beginning of future ventures with contemporary artists.The result is a fresh makeover for Chaumet’s sporty Class One, one that combines precious and industrial materials like mother-of-pearl, steel and diamonds for a modern yet luxurious new look in a monochromatic finish.
Cecchini, an Italian artist based in Berlin, is a multi-disciplinarian who has produced photography, sculpture, drawings and installations in which he experiments with forms, producing poetic alterations of ordinary objects. His sculptural pieces create a distorted reality by replicating wave ripples or shockwaves onto a flat rigid surface, playing with the notion of ambiguity in visual perception.
“We had a wonderful encounter with Loris Cecchini whose work was known within the LVMH group,” explained the Maison Chaumet, itself a part of the LVMH group of companies. “Our president, Thierry Fritsch, who is a connoisseur of contemporary art, selected this artist for the project.”
In 2012, Cecchini had participated in a group show titled “Turbulences” at the Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton in Paris where his piece titled Gaps (Airborne), a low relief sculpture made of painted resin, evoked organic forms bursting out of the wall. The idea, according to Cecchini, was to convey the notion of fluidity directly onto the wall and to play with architecture while challenging established notions of sculpture.
In his subsequent Wallwave Vibration series, Cecchini experimented with organic transfiguration, exploring the possibilities of visual distortion and ethereal forms with a series of wall pieces that reproduced the visual patterns of shock or water waves. Wallwave Vibration, the installation that served as inspiration for the redesign of the Class One, and Waterbones, a suspension of steel metal modules, will both be shown next month at the Chaumet boutique.
“I work as a designer first, drawing and using industrial processes, and then I use traditional processes of sculpture. I want the space around the creation to be a continuity of a mirage, somewhere between illusion and reality, abstraction and usefulness, fantasy and materiality,” Cecchini said.
What resonated with the Maison Chaumet were three elements in Cecchini’s artistic process, namely his powerful graphic design, his use of industrial materials and his fascination with water, all elements found in Chaumet’s own stylistic vernacular.
Cecchini, for whom watch design was unchartered territory, has created a work of art reduced to the size of a wearable timepiece. He was given carte blanche by Chaumet, subject only to certain technical constraints including the thickness of the dial, the weight of the materials and the diameter of the working surface.
Taking elements from his Wallwave Vibration series, Cecchini has designed a split-level dial that appears to vibrate as with sand sprinkled on the surface of water. “The volume and light reflections of water come to life on the dial, adorned with lace-like mother-of-pearl and a satin-finished, sunburst-effect background,” explained the Maison Chaumet.
The rippling effects extend beyond the confines of the dial, overlapping playfully onto the white calfskin bracelet. The stainless steel case is set with 38 brilliant-cut diamonds. The artist also created a sculpted removable casing for the watch’s white box, an object that stands alone as a sculpture.
