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The Harcourt Vitrines project by BARDULA was commissioned by New York’s Baccarat Hotel. It is located on 53rd Street opposite MoMA, in a Skidmore, Owings & Merrill tower comprising the Baccarat Residences (designed by New Yorker Tony Ingrao) and the Baccarat Hotel.
Open in March 2015, the hotel presents the Harcourt Vitrines, a project devised by Parisian interior designers Gilles & Boissier, tasked with the overall design of the hotel. It takes place among the hotel’s specially curated collection, by art connoisseur Frédéric Chambre, director of art auction house Piasa, rue du Faubourg St Honoré in Paris.
French artist BARDULA was given carte blanche to create works on the theme of the Harcourt Glass, a timeless Baccarat icon, with particular reference to the idea of an explosion. The artists’ works are placed in glass display cases in front of the hotel’s suites, representing a complete symbiosis of contemporary French refinement, creativity, and expertise with Baccarat’s heritage.
The project by artist BARDULA consists of five brushed aluminum installations, forming a kinetic geometric whole magnified by the permeating light. The installations function as a narrative reinterpretation of the four primary elements – Fire, Air, Water and Earth – and the fifth element which links them all, the Quintessence or force of life. Each installation symbolizes one of these five elements, with the metal layers forming simple geometric figures which follow a logical progression: firstly a triangle, then a square, a hexagon, and a circle, and finally a circle inscribed in a square.