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S ébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant are the brains behind Coperni, the Parisian ready-to-wear and accessories brand known for its tailoring, wearability and innovative use of technology.
Here they explain how family and friends influence them and select their highlights from the Contemporary Curated sale.
What influences your work as designers?
The human element and technology are the two influences, the key elements that influence our work. We are very attentive to the people around us. We are very fortunate to work with friends: Coperni is mainly an affair of family and encounters. Our main inspiration comes from the people who make up our family. As designers, we have to take an interest in their needs, their desires and do everything to create body-enhancing pieces, giving them confidence.
Technology also plays an important role in our work. The tools we have at our disposal today are fantastic and limitless. They allow us to realise projects, stay in touch and even re-imagine the world of tomorrow.
Do you consider yourself collectors?
I think we are all collectors in a way. To collect is to immortalize a story, a memory, an era by way of an object. Since we first met over ten years ago, we have tried to collect pieces to remember our own history, the path we have taken.
Sébastien and Arnaud's Picks from Contemporary Curated
How would you describe the Paris Art scene today?
Paris has become a city rich in its diversity of what it has to offer artistically. We are particularly sensitive to the work being done by young gallery owners who strive to propose alternative projects and highlight new artists.
The gallery "Sans Titre" created by Marie Madec is one of them. In the space of only a few years she has succeeded in organizing quality exhibitions, revealing artists such as Alicia Adamerovivh, Agnes Scherer, Hamish Pearch or Romain Sarrot.
Who are your favourite artists?
The artists whose work we feel the closest to are; Donald Judd - his minimalism and his sculpture bring to mind our bags with their pure forms. Peter Hujar and Felix Gonzales Torres – For their Activism in response to HIV/AIDS, the rigor, the timelessness and purity of their work. We discovered these artists through our friend Thor Shannon who worked at Gavin Brown Enterprises and who now works for David Zwimer; Jeremy Shaw who had an absolutely incredible show at Beaubourg last year that really moved us; Chloé Wise – our long-time friend whose work we absolutely adore. It is super contemporary, the painting as the sculpture, and she works with people from our community who are really inspirational. Finally, Alicja Kwade because her work brings to mind the constellations, the planets, it reminds us of the aesthetic world of Coperni, inspired by Copernicus. A collector friend in Berlin had some works that we discovered in the bunker of the Boros collection, one of our favourite places in the world to view art.
Main image: The duo behind Coperni: Arnaud Vaillant and Sébastien Meyer © Jean du Sartel
