DDA-Geneva continues its networking efforts through a collaboration with KRONE COURONNE in Biel and Geneva-based artists Mabe Bethônico, Thomas Liu Le Lann, Lou Masduraud, and Paul Paillet. The exhibition Just an Everyday Object offers both a thorough reflection on the notions of editions in art, artists’ "multiples", and reproducibility, while also expanding the inquiry to questions regarding the status of the object—and more specifically, the art object. It explores systems
of production, varied uses, circulation, and the shifting statuses objects may acquire depending on the context along their path. Under the title Just an Everyday Object, the exhibition highlights the relationship between the art object, the private or domestic space, and the everyday—particularly through its proximity to ornamentation, tools, and craft. It also explores how seemingly ordinary objects—everyday jewellery, utilitarian items, furniture, accessories—become both extensions of the self and instruments of representation. For the exhibition, the four artists engage with these ideas by creating new multiples, produced by DDA-Geneva, each opening up new perspectives.

Paul Paillet’s work reveals subtle allusions to private life, which provides part of the symbolic material for his pieces. Intimacy is suggested at times through the evocation of daily rituals, and at other times through the representation of everyday objects serving as frames for memory. For Just an Everyday Object, the artist has created a series of screenprints: Nelson (Green) and Enora (Pink) depict flat-plan views of contemporary sofas. The models (and names!) are borrowed from furniture megastore catalogues, creating a contrast with the delicacy of the experimental, handcrafted prints made with aluminium pigment-based ink.

A large roll of fabric unfurls in the centre of the space. Interior 1, from the series Soil Stories by Mabe Bethônico, is presented like fabric sold in a haberdashery. The printed patterns adopt the repetitive logic of the textile industry, but their origin lies in a research project led by the artist on the soil layer—also known as horizon O—which is responsible for decomposition, transformation, and organic matter exchange, as well as for connecting ecosystems. Positioned above the mineral layers exploited by mining companies, this living layer is destroyed during "stripping" operations. The printed motif shows a dead root, itself derived from a linocut, whose repetition forms an abstract, rhizomatic grid. During the exhibition, the fabric is cut and sold by the meter, like a haberdashery item. Through the act of cutting and the public’s intervention, Mabe Bethônico’s work becomes an edition, ready to integrate into an interior.

With Count on me, Lou Masduraud presents a series of silver brooches depicting the numbers 0 through 9. The series subverts the idea of the multiple and its reproducibility through a conceptual play on numbering: the numbering itself constitutes the artwork. It is also a reflection on the artwork as ornament, on originality and uniqueness, in relation to jewellery and the dimension of preciousness and singularity that comes with it.

For his multiple the first cut is the deepest, Thomas Liu Le Lann draws inspiration from box cutters produced by Supreme, a New York streetwear brand founded in 1994 and mainly targeting young skaters and artists. The title of the multiple refers to the song of the same name by Cat Stevens, written in 1967. The small hand tool bears the inscription TRUST ME on its retractable blade, suggesting a personal and dual relationship with this seemingly banal utilitarian object.

A cutter.
To open a box,
To slice a grip,
To sever anything lifeless, Or perhaps, to end it all.
Your Only Limit is Oblivion.

Mabe Bethônico (*1966, lives and works in Geneva) is a Brazilian artist, researcher, and professor. She lives and works in Geneva. Her work focuses particularly on the history of mining and its consequences for the environment and society. Her projects explore the cultural, economic, and political transformations caused by extractive activities, using archival and field documentation. Bethônico's artistic practice encompasses a wide range of tools and dynamics involving knowledge sharing. This results in different media such as books, posters, installations, objects, and live presentations. In her work, she is interested in institutional issues and the complex process of constructing and activating memory.

Thomas Liu Le Lann (*1994) is a French artist who lives and works in Geneva. He creates sculptures and installations using multiple techniques, using fabric, glass, wood, photography, poetry and found objects. His environments evoke his own life experiences through a logic of play, subversion and autofiction. The objects he invokes are reimagined, changing scale and materials, and frequently encounter soft heroes, protagonists with human manners who lasciviously inhabit his exhibitions.

Lou Masduraud (*1990) lives and works in Geneva. She is interested in the spaces and practices of collective life as well as the systems that make them possible. In her installations, often created in a contextual manner, she works with the formal and informal networks of human activities. The more or less visible machinery
(electrical networks, public lighting, sewers, underground), which constantly pump and evacuate the flows necessary for the life of the city: street lamps, air vents, basements, hydraulic infrastructure then become skylights into the interior of the body of the city, revealing the negative places inhabited by the infrastructures, architectures and institutions on which we depend for our lives. Combining conceptual sculpture, installation and artisanal know-how, the artist creates phantasmagorical worlds as alternatives to the dominant realities and offers the experience of this transfiguration of everyday life as a first form of emancipation. Lou Masduraud has presented her work in solo exhibitions (MAMCO Geneva, Kunsthaus Langenthal, Kunstraum Riehen, Institut Français in Berlin, Ada project Rome, CAN Neuchâtel, La Maison Populaire Montreuil, BF15 Lyon) and collective exhibitions in European institutions (Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, Centre for Contemporary Art of Geneva, Villa Medici in Rome, CRAC Alsace, MCBA Lausanne, CAPC Bordeaux, Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard, Kunsthaus Hamburg, Kunsthalle Basel, Lyon Biennale, Moscow Biennale, etc.). In 2024, she was awarded the Swiss Art Award and in 2023 she received the Manor Cultural Prize from the canton of Geneva.

Paul Paillet (*1986) lives and works in Geneva. His practice revolves around the mediums of sculpture, painting, sound, and video. Through an introspective approach, he offers a body of work that draws its resources from the essentialization of the concepts of adolescence, determinism, and crisis, which he confronts with economic and even political phenomena and strategies. His work has been presented in various institutions such as the Centre d'édition contemporaine and Villa Bernasconi in Geneva, the Swiss Art Awards 2023 in Basel, and at 104 in Paris. He has exhibited in various off-spaces such as Standard/Deluxe in Lausanne, French Place in London, and Espace 3353 in Geneva. Paul Paillet has also curated and co-organized numerous exhibitions in Marseille with the PostDisasterResi-dencies group and at the Non-Profit Space ÀDuplex in Geneva.

Documents d’artistes Genève (DDA-Genève) is an evolving editorial platform that documents the practices of artists working in the field of contemporary art in Geneva. Launched in January 2023, it serves as a tool for discovery, dissemination, and research. The platform regularly publishes new artist portfolios enriched with editorial content.

The exhibition Just an Everyday Object was supported by the Loterie Romande, the City of Geneva, the Inarema Foundation, the Burgauer Foundation, and the Georg and Josi Guggenheim Foundation.