Mathieu Lehanneur and the fifty shades of blue

Can we reference the colours of the seas of the globe? With “50 Seas”, his exhibition presented until February 2 at Christie’s Paris, Mathieu Lehanneur seems to assume the role of the scientist to answer this question. The French designer presents a series of fifty glazed ceramic discs, all in a different shade of blue from the seas of the globe. A “nuancier of our liquid environment” in which the visitor navigates both in its subtle complementarity but also in the singularity of each of the pieces. Mathieu Lehanneur is not stranger to the theme of the sea and its movements. With his works “Liquid Marble” and “Ocean Memories”, the designer was already exploring ways of representing the liquid state with solid materials (here, ceramics). “50 Seas” is also the affirmation that advanced technologies can feed the decorative arts: to create his fifty discs, Mathieu Lehanneur relied on high-definition satellite photos to represent fifty precise points distributed over the surface of the globe. Like the guests attending the opening of the exhibition, from Sarah Andelman to Alexandre de Betak, one cannot help asking the question: Mathieu Lehanneur would have found here the way to represent infinity?