Swiss luxury skincare brand La Prairie today opened an art exhibition exploring “the beauty, the mystery and the enduring timelessness of the gaze”. The exhibition, themed ‘Eyes in Focus’, is appearing at Art Basel in the city of Basel within the La Prairie Pavilion in the Collectors Lounge.
The Moodie Davitt Report is on location in Basel and Zürich to examine this unique collaboration between the luxury and art worlds [we’ll bring you an extensive feature in coming days].
The project has seen La Prairie select three up and coming Swiss female photographers, all graduates of the Lausanne University of Art and Design (ECAL), a post-secondary educational institution known for promoting Swiss creativity around the world and ranked among the world’s top ten universities of art.
La Prairie Group President and Chief Executive Officer Patrick Rasquinet told guests at the opening, “This year we decided to open a new chapter of our Skin Caviar collection. And we decided to put a special focus on the eyes as they represent the mirror of the soul. La Prairie decided to explore this emotional, this powerful, this defining quality of the eye. And to explore this notion of gaze we decided to commission an artistic dialogue through three artists.
“These three artists have a lot in common. First, they are all young because La Prairie believes that emerging artists have the power to shape the future. The second commonality is that they are all female artists, because La Prairie strongly believes that women’s wishes and desires are at the forefront of everything we do. And all are Swiss, because we love to express our Swiss heritage through the prism of art.”
La Prairie described the trio – Daniela Droz, Namsa Leuba and Senta Simond – as the “new guard of contemporary photography”, each with her own unique approach. “Their works embody an unmistakable Swiss aesthetic and, as women, they bring a singular perspective to the beauty and the power of the gaze,” the beauty house said.
Each of the three photographic experiences is conceived by their respective creators as an immersive journey – one that takes the viewer into the revived, raised, redefined nature of the gaze. The exhibition celebrates the female gaze through the prism of the female photographer’s eye.
“We are very excited to partner with Daniela, Namsa and Senta,” said La Prairie Chief Marketing Officer Greg Prodromides. “Their pioneering works are in perfect harmony with La Prairie’s heritage of audacity. We firmly believe that it is essential to support and encourage young artists who are forward-thinking while remaining sensitive to the timelessness of art. As Swiss artists, their refined, minimal approach is completely in line with that of La Prairie’s aesthetic.
“In making the deliberate choice to work with female artists, we also pay homage to the inimitable quality of the female gaze, interpreted by the perspective of women themselves. These artists break the codes of their chosen medium, just as La Prairie continues to break the codes of luxury skincare with unexpected creations,” Prodromides added.
Each of the three photographic installations address the life, the power and the intimate vantage point contained within the gaze. They are intended to reflect La Prairie’s latest breakthrough innovation – Skin Caviar Eye Lift – and its ability to revive, raise, redefine, “for a gaze reawakened”.
Reflections on a gaze
In her series, Daniela Droz transforms photographs into mirrors which reflect the viewer’s gaze back to themselves. The viewer is confronted with their own emotions rather than those emitted by a third party or inanimate object. The viewer thus becomes part of the art, giving the resultant gaze a timeless quality.
“For this project I decided to try to interrogate the viewer’s gaze and turn it back on her,” said Ms Droz of the three abstract pieces transposed on reflective surfaces that she has produced. “I sought to accentuate the idea of a new approach to photography which follows the principles of Constructivism or Bauhaus: with a new point of view, outside the generally accepted rules of perspective.”
Bringing out hidden emotions
Namsa Leuba explores the expression of time through the image of the viewer’s own impression of it. Through the extension of the image between the black and white photographic technique and the colourful background frame, she brings to light the “expression of the present moment”.
This duality is a direct reflection of Ms Leuba’s bi-cultural heritage. “In approaching this collaboration around the theme of Eyes in Focus, I wanted to illustrate the nature of emotions hidden in us and that attempt to come through the veil that covers them,” she said. In her work, she contrasts the passage of the lived moment with memory through abstract and colourful character. Ms Leuba has produced three colour-framed images for the collaboration with La Prairie.
Playing with the gaze
Senta Simond shot a series of portraits of close-ups of young women. Her subjects are not professional models but women from her surroundings – authentic, natural and unaffected.
The images allow the viewers to immerse themselves in the beauty of the subject’s gaze as their eye travels over the portrait like a painting. “For this series, I play with the gaze of my subjects by photographing them in different emotional states, reflecting different postures and attitudes,” Ms Simond said.
“There is the ‘male gaze’, which we tend to associate with objectification; and the ‘female gaze’, which is usually linked with introspection. I hope with these works, that viewers are able to find some affinity with ‘my gaze’.”
For this series, Ms Simond selected several women and shot them individually, emphasising the intimacy between artist and subject through a mix of both black and white and colour portraiture.
Footnote: Look out for further coverage of Eyes in Focus in the next edition of The Moodie Davitt eZine, including an interview with La Prairie Group President and Chief Executive Officer Patrick Rasquinet, Chief Marketing Officer Greg Prodromides and Director of Strategic Innovation and Science Dr. Jacqueline Hill.
