First Floor. Boon Monceau.
“In Conversation” frames design and art installations as a dialogue rather than an isolated situation, examining how spatial proximity generates meaning. While some pairings achieve connection through closeness and visual exchange, others reveal how distance, placement, and modes of display can maintain separation despite formal similarities. The relationship between Humble Matter’s Games People Play and Valeria Vasi’s Whirling Dervish Astor demonstrates how works can occupy the same environment yet remain curiously independent, creating a dialogue defined as much by absence as by interaction.
The most relevant framework for the In Conversation series is Edward T. Hall’s theory of proxemics and its application to gallery space. Hall’s concept argues that humans’ perception of space, although derived from the sensory apparatus that all humans share, is modelled by culture. In an exhibition context, Hall’s proxemics become a way of reading how spatial distance between artworks actively shapes visual and interpretative relationships. The distance between Games People Play and Whirling Dervish Astor situates them within what Hall describes as the social zone, approximately two metres apart. Although this distance allows both works to coexist comfortably within the same visual field, it also creates an unexpected sense of detachment. Their spatial relationship is particularly striking because the works appear predisposed to dialogue: both employ light tonalities and ceramic materials, sharing an understated material language of clay and porcelain. Yet rather than encroaching upon one another’s territory, each work remains firmly anchored within its own spatial domain. Humble Matter’s wall-mounted sculpture projects outward from the wall, creating depth through shadow and extension, while Vasi’s vessel occupies the contained space of the Fresh.Glass shelf. Their placement produces a symmetrical balance in which neither work dominates the other. However, this balance is achieved through separation rather than interaction. The result is a pairing that resists the intimacy suggested by their visual affinities, transforming proximity into a condition of parallel existence rather than exchange.
This sense of independence is reinforced through the viewer’s movement within the gallery. Upon entering the room, Games People Play immediately attracts attention. Positioned at eye level and extending beyond the flatness of the wall, the work produces a sensory response through shadow and projection. Despite its pale colouring, it possesses a physical presence that activates the surrounding architecture and, in doing so, subtly frames the room itself. Whirling Dervish Astor, by contrast, reveals itself more gradually. Encountered within the shelf structure, its volumetric form and delicate materiality become increasingly apparent as viewers move closer. Interestingly, the sequence reverses upon departure: the vase becomes one of the final objects encountered, lingering in memory after the wall sculpture has receded from view. This shifting dynamic creates two separate narrative trajectories rather than a unified compositional hierarchy. The works neither compete nor directly converse; instead, they accompany the viewer at different moments of the spatial experience. Their co-presence generates a third meaning centred on the tension between enclosure and openness. Vasi’s vessel embodies containment, suggesting an interior space held within form, while Humble Matter’s sculpture projects outward into the gallery, dissolving the boundaries between object and environment. Together, they articulate two opposing ways of inhabiting space: one gathers space inward, the other releases it outward. Although the works remain independent, their juxtaposition invites reflection on how objects negotiate the relationship between interiority and exposure. The installation therefore suggests that dialogue does not always emerge through direct interaction; sometimes meaning is produced through the quiet coexistence of fundamentally different spatial attitudes.