Since July 2, 2021, Dover Street Market Beijing has invited LEMAIRE to stage an ephemeral installation open to public. Thought around the concept store’s emblematic elephant, this installation is the result of a LEMAIRE’s first collaboration with Chinese artist Lin Yan.
As Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran explain, “Lin Yan’s work of paper feels confident and patient: the way she shapes paper to create texture and light seems infinite. In some way, her work echoes the way we think about clothes: a light home as a shelter with multiple layers.”
Taking elements of domestic architecture, the pop-up space takes shape through three doors, a window, and a floor plan, all made of hanging papers structures. Five silhouettes and accessories from the Fall-Winter 2021 collection are articulated within these delicate yet strong structures. For Lin Yan, Xuan paper is not merely the submissive medium of painting; rather, it can be shaped to possess weight and multiples layers to tell a story of its own.
Using crumpled up layers of hand-made rice paper with ink, Lin embosses old doors and windows from the Beijing cityscape turning them into sculpted-paintings, creating in their turn a new architectural landscape. Playing with black and white tones, firmness and softness are harmoniously juxtaposed; each quality implicates the other, like the constant negotiation of void and fullness in tai chi, or the yin-yang balance in traditional Chinese philosophy.
Lin says: “Creation is also a process of communication with material. When I hold the traditional Chinese handmade paper which is the material just like me, it is as comfortable and pleasant as wearing a garment that would perfectly express my personality."
The Fall-Winter 2021 Collection will be available at the 3rd floor of Dover Street Market Beijing
