RESIDENCIES

RESIDENCY #4
ENIGMATIC REFRACTIONS

Designers:

FERRÉOL BABIN
ANNA RESEI

FERRÉOL BABIN

​​Ferréol Babin (born 1987) is a French designer and furniture maker. After completing his studies in Space Design in ENSA of Dijon, he moved to Japan, to the Nagoya University of Art & Design. In 2012 he graduated from ESAD of Reims, in Object Design. In 2014 he took part in a residency at Fabrica in Treviso, Italy. His practice includes both collaborating with various furniture and lighting editors, where he incorporates his singular vision and approach of design, and making unique, auto-produced pieces with a brutalist yet delicate approach. His projects are based on function and rationality, combined with a poetic and emotional dimension.

ferreolbabin.fr

ANNA RESEI

Anna Resei (born 1989) is a conceptual designer based in Hamburg, Germany. She creates functional and abstract interior objects that explore our relationship with the material world. Anna graduated cum laude from Design Academy Eindhoven with a master in Contextual Design (2021) and was a finalist of the 15th Design Parade Hyères. Her works have been nominated for the young talent award ein&zwanzig as part of the German Design Council. She received a scholarship for Digital Crafts from Task Force Textiles at ABK Stuttgart in 2021 and is currently a designer in residence at MK&G Hamburg.

annaroro.com

RESIDENCY #4
ENIGMATIC REFRACTIONS

TURIN, ITALY
DUPARC CONTEMPORARY SUITES
2023

A year-long project started with a residency in Turin, Italy, and culminated in the production of a collection of works and the publication of a monograph book on each designer.


ENIGMATIC REFRACTIONS

“Art is a sphinx. The beauty of the sphinx is that it is up to you to interpret it. When you have found an interpretation, you are already healed. The common mistake is to believe that the sphinx can only give one correct answer. In reality it gives a hundred, a thousand, or maybe none. Interpretation undoubtedly does not restore the truth to us, but the exercise of interpreting saves us”
Saul Steinberg (1)

 

“The invented image has its own truth”
Giordano Bruno (2)

 

 

Each object carries a share of pure enigmaticity, a fraction of the indistinguishable and imponderable – and therefore inexplicable, if not unspeakable – that accompanies its life cycle. The enigma, like an inseparable aura or an impalpable identifying character, is inherent in the existence of the object itself: from the simplest to the most sophisticated, all tangible presences are affected by a pervasive and persistent – but often imperceptible – fraction of mystery, because «in visible forms is present the invisible». (3)

 

In other ways, one often wants to grant the artifact the authority of a symbolic entity, of a talisman that can deter the mystery coupled with present and future existence. The object acts as an ideal optical device that tries to open a gap of vision through refraction – understood as the breaking – of the indecipherable.

 

The design of objects, following this reasoning, can be considered as a practice with which to venture attempts to decode the inexplicable, by creating tangible emblems, which are incapable of revealing “the” truth but are functional in stimulating the comparison with the universal riddle proposed by the sphinx of living. Metaphorically speaking, these objects can be considered as mirrors, to be connected through a theorem of reflections and refractions in an attempt – never definitive and never completely successful – to aim in the direction of the occult and the invisible.

 

What characters can these objects have?
What messages can they convey?
What categories or kinds of refraction can they trigger?

 

The “enigmatic refractions”, in the dense abstraction that the association of these two words implies, seem to suggest the idea of a phenomenon that concerns the behavior of light waves, the faculty of seeing and that of perceiving; but the spectrum of topics connected to this theme can expand dramatically, finding innumerable and unexpected consonances and correspondences.

 

Turin is a candidate for the ideal place to reflect critically on these topics, to give them a creative interpretation. As the metaphysical artist Giorgio de Chirico wrote, «the city is made for philosophical dissertations», adding: «Turin is the deepest, most enigmatic, most uncanny city. Not of Italy, but of the world». (4)

 

(1) Pierre Schneider, Louvre Dialogues, Atheneum, New York, 1971
(2) Giordano Bruno, De vinculis in genere, Artemide Libri, Milan, 2019
(3) Riccardo Dottori, Giorgio de Chirico, Immagini metafisiche, La nave di Teseo, Milan, 2018
(4) Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco, de Chirico: gli anni Trenta, Skira, Milan, 1996

THE OUTCOMES

Ferréol Babin
Fragments

The perception of parts of an urban cosmos explored for the first time, along with the acquisition of fractional information and partial impressions, has led the designer to formulate a restitution of the stimuli accumulated during the residency, starting precisely with the theme of the shard, the scrap, the particle.

In this collection of original objects and furnishings created as one-offs, all made with skilled craftsmanship, the single impressions on the theme meet with a specific modality of formal expression, that carries the designer’s unique textural imprint. Through his extensive study of wood-working techniques, Babin acquired the skills to  respect and manipulate the material. Expressing reverence to the integrity of time-honored materials, tools and methods, Babin draws inspiration from the physical process of making.

Anna Resei
Drift: Enigmatic Refractions

Anna Resei with Drift: Enigmatic Refractions transforms the mirror from a simple object of reflection into a conceptual and sculptural medium. The work consists of two large mirrors, one circular, one rectangular, framed by colored glass fragments crafted through traditional Venetian techniques in collaboration with Vetralia Collectible.

These fragments, layered and collage-like, create surfaces full of tension, ambiguity, and shifting perceptions. Rather than offering faithful reflections, the mirrors produce multiple, mutable images that challenge notions of truth, identity, and representation. By blending digital aesthetics with artisanal glassmaking, Anna Resei explores reflection as an active, transformative act, an interplay between visibility and invisibility, presence and disappearance. The work does not aim to provide clarity but to evoke, question, and disorient. In doing so, it becomes a poetic threshold between reality and imagination, inviting viewers to engage with perception as a fluid, uncertain, and participatory experience.

 

THE EXHIBITIONS

The works developed by Ferréol Babin during his residency were exhibited at Friedman Benda Gallery, Los Angeles. Fragments marked the designer’s first solo gallery exhibition and the first occasion for the public to encounter a comprehensive body of his work.

Inspired by medieval wooden scaffolding once used in building practices, the Vestige shelving unit and bench in dark oak appeared as archaeological remnants reimagined through a contemporary lens. Another highlight of the show was the imposing Monolithe sideboard, which seemed to have been shaped as much by wind or fire as by the human hand. By cultivating a sense of ambiguity around the making process, Babin left behind “fragments” that invited viewers to explore and interpret the meaning of each piece for themselves.

For the fifth edition of the Venice Design Biennial, in the exhibition Extinction / Salvation – Glass, Anna Resei presented Drift: Enigmatic Refractions. Installed in dialogue with Venice’s centuries-old glassmaking tradition, the work took the form of two sculptural mirrors framed by richly colored Venetian glass fragments, made in collaboration with Vetralia Collectible.

The installation underscored the tension between reflection and perception, transforming the mirror into an active medium of ambiguity and transformation. By situating her project in Venice, Resei emphasized the encounter between artisanal heritage and contemporary conceptual design, creating mirrors that are both a tribute to glass as a living material and a poetic exploration of its expressive potential.


THE MONOGRAPHIC BOOKS

Published by Quodlibet, the monographic book is dedicated to the work of Ferréol Babin as part of a series of monographs on the thought and work of young contemporary designers.
Illustrated by a rich photographic series, the book presents the results of Babin’s creative thought through some selected projects; written by Barbara Brondi & Marco Rainò and designed by BRH+, the volume recounts the experience of the IN Residence Design Residency inspired by the theme “Enigmatic Refractions”.