STUDIO VISITS | Creative Spaces and Collected Lives

Demisch Danant presents Studio Visits, an exhibition inspired by the creative spaces, personal collections and spirit of discovery that have shaped the gallery’s vision since its earliest days.

The exhibition takes its cue from a formative period in the late 1990s, when Suzanne Demisch and Stéphane Danant spent many hours travelling through France and beyond in search of inspiring furniture, artworks and objects. Long before digital marketplaces and online inventories transformed the landscape of collecting, discovery often happened through conversations, chance encounters and visits to studios, private homes, workshops and flea markets.

Bringing together furniture, sculpture, photography, works on paper, lighting, maquettes, prototypes and vernacular objects, Studio Visits captures the ethos and aesthetic of creative spaces through the objects found within them. Hidden treasures emerge throughout the exhibition: works by César, Maria Pergay, Pierre Paulin, Michel Boyer and Joseph-André Motte, as well as Roger Tallon’s Module 400 Staircase, acquired from César’s Paris studio, alongside anonymous and unexpected pieces. Within a creative space, hierarchies and categories often collapse through accumulation and happenstance. An important artwork may sit in conversation with an unassuming stool; art, design and functional objects cohabit.

At its heart, Studio Visits recalls the early days of picking, when collecting was a slower, more personal pursuit shaped by research, intuition, curiosity and the thrill of the treasure hunt. The exhibition invites visitors out of the digital realm and into the messy physicality of a creative space, where objects carry personal narratives and collecting remains an act of discovery.

The exhibition will feature pop-ups and activations throughout its run.