SOUL, a new collection by Charles Kalpakian

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Six landscapes aiming high

Design fairs are usually conversation starters. It was in London a few years ago... Frédéric Winkler from DCWéditions met French-Lebanese designer Charles Kalpakian. Their respective booths stood face-to-face. But this wasn't a standoff. On the contrary, they were both engaged by camaraderie and elective affinities, including a desire to work together, and above all, to get to know each other. Childhood, education, games and dreams... For Charles Kalpakian, it was Lebanon and that paradoxical freedom, right out of school, to run and play in a city that was in pieces.

It was these memories, plucked from exultant and traumatic urban explorations, that he metabolised for DCWéditions, which were then challenged by Frédéric Winkler and his obsession with blind corridor angles. Draw me a light... Fiat lux with Soul, a series of six plaster lamps intended as wall lamps and designed to be scrutinised as if entering a dark alley at dusk and suddenly being pierced with a surreal ray of light.

Storytelling elements of a memorial biography, these landscapes of curiosity gave designer Charles Kalpakian, star talent of the Parisian gallery BSL and experienced in the work of metal, stone, bronze, lacquer and velvet, the opportunity to master a new material in his workshop.

He moulded six figures similar to Etruscan masks from this vernacular and humble material. In the pure white of the matrix material, he sometimes slipped a flat gold leaf to sublimate each lamp's backlight.

A self-confessed biographical exercise, Soul invites contemplation of each model through the gaze of a small metal character, either seated or standing, that DCWéditions invites you to handle as a self-portrait of Kalpakian...

SOUL is an adventure

"The SOUL collection was born after an exchange of drawings during a discussion with Fred Winkler. He said to me "Draw worlds, but worlds that light us up".
Sunlight is at the heart of the project. It provides the intrigue for this object, it appears from nowhere, invisible and naturally magical. Like the sun's rays that penetrate a house through a half-open door.

It makes us discover worlds, memories. This micro architecture evokes my travels but above all my roots. It is a collective Mediterranean memory that evokes the sun but also the evening light."

Further information in the press release to download