Reflection on Measurement & Time: Benoit Maire at the Ozenfant House, Paris.

Genius Loci is a program of immersive exhibitions by eponymous organizations that create a dialogue between architecture, design and contemporary art. Each edition spotlights hidden or little-known architectural treasures, offering exceptional opportunities to visit private venues that are normally closed to the public.

For its latest edition in partnership with Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome, Genius Loci presented in Paris, in a historic landmark of modern architecture, a series of “Roman” works by the interdisciplinary artist Benoît Maire. The exhibition, curated by Marion Vignal, comprised a selection of paintings, sculptures, furniture designs and a video created by Maire during his residency at Villa Medici between 2021 and 2022. These works were on view at the Ozenfant House, built in 1923 by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret for the painter Amédée Ozenfant, and open to the public especially for this event.

Conceived as a journey from Rome to Paris, the exhibition evoked a reflection on measurement and time, echoing Maire’s artistic process as well as the essence of this unique building, a veritable manifesto of the “new spirit” in architecture.

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The display was an architectural and artistic promenade through a selection of “Roman” works by Benoît Maire, in dialogue with the radical purity of the studio created by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret for their friend Amédée Ozenfant. Two paintings by Ozenfant, completed in this very space in 1929, were on view especially for the occasion.

Benoît Maire’s creations, whether furniture pieces, sculptures, paintings or videos, all inherently address the question of measurement and time. The time needed for conception, production, nature and human existence all blend together in a reflection on the scale of the human being within a space—a fundamental concept for Le Corbusier, who strove his entire life to achieve the ideal balance between the body and its environment.

The Ozenfant Studio-House is the very first of the purist constructions by Le Corbusier and Jeanneret, and the duo’s first creation in Paris. Commissioned by the painter Amédée Ozenfant (1886–1966) from his friend Charles Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier (1887–1965), it was built in 1923 on Avenue Reille, across from the Montsouris reservoirs.

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[Photography by Adrien Dirand.]