Since 2009, Cartier has been collaborating with contemporary artists, like David Lynch, Takeshi Kitano, and Beatriz Milhazes, in Artist Meets Artisan, a project exploring how stones can be reused. Its latest collaboration is with French artist Jean-Michel Alberola and titled “The Precision of Opposites.” I recently visited the store in Soho to see the exhibition.
Upon entering the new Greene Street boutique, you can’t miss the painting of the moon. Based on an illustration from Camille Flammarion’s 1880 book Popular Astronomy, the painting is one of the pieces Alberola included. How fitting: The big universal rock in the sky — what better symbolism of the value assigned to certain objects and materials over others?
As you take a few steps toward the back and pivot slightly to your right, there is a glass display case where you can find the rest of the pieces: a set of rings, one made of steel with a diamond and the other made of platinum and quartz; two chunks of quartz masterfully joined by emery disks; and a tray that was sprinkled with the dust of rubies, amethyst, emeralds, and sapphire. But the prize jewel of the show was a rock that Alberola recovered from … the beach. It was placed inside a box encrusted with precious stones.
Why choose a rock from the beach? In his piece The Memory, Alberola wanted to highlight how a memory, in this case of the day he picked up this inconspicuous rock, can hold more value to him than the precious stones encasing it.
And while the rocks you collected on your last trip to the beach might not make it to the exhibit, you’ll know that one was showcased at the boutique in hopes to show the beauty in both the banal and the luxurious.
