at MaMo, Ora-ïto and Daniel Arsham pay tribute to Le Corbusier
This summer in Marseille, designer Ora-ïto is inviting New York artist Daniel Arsham, a big fan of Le Corbusier, to MaMo.
Air Jordan sneakers customized with the effigy of the Modulor dear to Le Corbusier, a basketball court straight out of an American teen movie. At first glance, it is hard to believe that we are in Marseille, at the top of the Cité radieuse, the architectural and social project commissioned after the war by the Minister for Reconstruction and Urban Planning and classified as a historic monument in 1986. On the roof- terrace converted into an open-air museum by Ora-ïto and baptized MaMo (for Marseille and Modulor), a bronze DeLorean, escaped from the film “Back to the Future”, confirms the spatio-temporal disorder, a few strides from ancient statues… In any case, enough to make purists cringe…
The master of the place, Ora-ïto, rejoices like a child by showing off the videos of the crane flying over the Vélodrome stadium that had to be requisitioned the day before to hoist the monumental installation… “When I bought this roof terrace in 2010 , I wanted to make it an experimental centre, a new space that could combine iconic architecture and the arts. Not a museum with perfect white walls and museum lighting. »
“I imagine objects that I want to see exist”, justifies Daniel Arsham
After Xavier Veilhan, Daniel Buren, Dan Graham, Felice Varini, Jean-Pierre Raynaud, Olivier Mosset, Alex Israel or the street artist Invader, he is therefore “the architect of the future”, the New Yorker and the new prince of the hype Daniel Arsham who took over the place to project his obsessions on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the vertical village. “Culture, sport, time… I imagine objects that I want to see exist, justifies the quadra to 1.2 million subscribers on Instagram. These baskets, I’ve been thinking about them for four or five years now. Because this model is the first for which I saved my pocket money. It was in 1993, I was 12 years old. Same generation and same madeleine, Ora-ïto adds: “Me too! They were white and burgundy! I bought them in Boston, during my first camp in the United States. This is where I discovered the whole culture of the basket! »
The designer continues: “When the MaMo was created, I put twenty names down on paper, and Daniel was already on my list. But first I invited artists whom I call “Santa Clauses”, because they were all 80 years old, with white beards and experience in the field. And the MaMo is an arena of crazy power that you have to know how to tame. »
Assembly of co-owners who watch over the grain, the Covid epidemic and even the aggressiveness of the mistral and the spray… Daniel Arsham has had to brave some headwinds since his meeting with Ora-ïto during Daniel Buren’s carte blanche in 2014… “We have was introduced by a mutual friend and when I offered to exhibit here, he immediately replied: “OK, when?” I said to him: “Tomorrow! In the end, it took him eight years…”
For Ora-ïto, “the MaMo is an arena that you have to know how to tame”
Meanwhile, Arsham, forced to abandon her initial project for security reasons, changed her tune and imagined two spaces, and an interior. So he takes over the gymnasium located on the roof terrace to restore it to its primary function… “After the confinements, I did some research on the building. I found old photos and discovered that, in the 1950s, it was a basketball court! But basketball holds a big place in my universe. I wanted to reinterpret this period terrain, taking into account Le Corbusier’s original drawings, his color palette and his patterns. »
Here the neo-basket therefore openly refers to “The open hand” of the maestro, the field takes up the graphics of the diagram of the 24 solar hours where the star has been replaced by the logo of Michael Jordan’s Jumpman. “A few years ago, it was very frowned upon by the profession to combine architecture, design, graphic arts, sums up Ora-ïto. Why put artists in boxes? Why not launch a clothing line, like Daniel is doing today? Creation should not be limited to a single medium. »
“Le Modulor du basket” by Daniel Arsham, at MaMo, 280, boulevard Michelet, Marseille VIII, until September 25.