José Lévy
France
José Lévy’s practices are a collection of disciplines and know-how patiently explored, compiled and organized. José Lévy designs objects and, by objects, we mean things made: porcelain for the Manufacture de Sèvres, ceramics for Astier de Villatte, crystal for Saint-Louis, furniture for Roche Bobois or Gallery S. Bensimon, candles, bath linen, clothes for him and others…
In his contemporary or past adventures (when the seasons of his memorable ready-to-wear brand were still on the march), Levy’s work describes the air of the times as fantasy and survival. Archaeologist, he searches in techniques and know-how, popular cultures and past banalities, the known but forgotten forms that inhabit his creations of nostalgia and reminiscences. Shared memories loosened and diluted in a contemporary writing that deliberately displaces the remarkable forms. The objects of José Lévy are between two ages, immediate and tangible, they display signs of affirmative contemporaneity and open up to possible times. José Lévy is a prizewinner of the Villa Kujoyama, Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris and was awarded the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres badge. He has collaborated with the Manufacture de Sèvres, the Tools Gallery, Emmanuel Perrotin, Astier de Villatte, Roche Bobois and the S. Bensimon Gallery …
At the end of 2014, he signs for Monoprix a collection of 120 products. For Arthur Nauzyciel, he made the costumes of Ordet (The Word), Jan Karski (My name is a fiction) and La Mouette. He also signs costumes and tattoos inspired by real drawings engraved on the skin of French prisoners of the last century for Splendid’s.