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If you have come across Jaime Hayon’s whimsical creations, you have known art, objects, and spaces bursting at the seams with innocent playfulness, vibrant colours, organic shapes, agile compositions, and surprising proportions—blurring and teasing the boundaries that define art and design. Recognised with Spain’s 2021 National Design Award, the Spanish designer’s idiosyncratic style and works have come to be realised within prestigious spaces—such as the Hyundai Moka Garden in Seoul, South Korea, as well as bespoke objects such as ‘Faunacrystopolis’ tableware for Baccarat, and installations such as ‘The Tournament’ at Trafalgar Square in London.
‘Jaime Hayon: InfinitaMente’ premiers within the sundry framework of the official program of World Design Capital Valencia 2022, as the first large-format retrospective of Hayon’s creative and personal works, including—furniture, paintings, ceramics, glass works, tapestries, sculptures, prototypes, samples, sketchbooks, notebooks and drawings, organised and produced by the Consorci de Museus.
On display till April 16, 2023 in the Ferreres - Goerlich hall of the Centre del Carme (CCCC) in Valencia, Spain, the design exhibition curated by Hayon Studio encapsulates the charismatic artist and designer’s ‘infinite mind’ and illustrious career. The exhibition compiles an extensive collection of the versatile Madrid-born creator, especially those closely linked with Valencia, including pieces that have never been exhibited in the country before.
“From an educational perspective, the project will be a journey through his personal universe and his creative process through materials, tools, inspiration and references,” mentions the museum’s official press statement, hinting at how ‘Jaime Hayon: InfinitaMente’ explores his creative evolution over time, as one of the most sought after, and original voices in contemporary design.
The secretary of Culture and Sport of the Government of Valencia, Ximo López Camps shares—"The multifaceted Jaime applies his personal imagination to everything he does, without distinction between the various areas of action in which he works: from design to art, crafts, interior design or painting. He is a serious and rigorous designer, orderly and methodical, who effectively and meticulously resolves the questions of function and use of objects he designs, but he is also a creator who explores the blurred boundary between design and art in pieces, in which responding to a function is not at all the main objective."
Journeying through Jaime Hayon’s infinite mind and creative universe
Glass and ceramics, major players in Hayon's work, remain the focus at two of the museum’s rooms, carrying themes of creativity applied to the materials, and their search for different expressive tools within disciplines. The central space is dedicated to the creative process behind pieces of furniture, lighting design and accessories of commercial nature, highlighting the behind-the-scenes of the creations and revealing their references, sources of inspiration, and details of both industrial and handcrafted production—which both enrich their stories and put the pieces in context—accompanied by Hayon’s personal sketchbooks, notebooks, and drawings, as well as various objects, samples, and prototypes.
The product designer and artist’s distinctive sculptures become preamble for the exhibition space, with the walls of the entrance area of the Ferreres and Goerlich room, themed entirely with Hayon’s work. Further on, the central hall dedicates itself to the Spanish artist’s creative process and quirky furniture designs, with the space sectioned into six colour modules, each representing specific aspects that inspire or define Hayon’s diverse oeuvre.
This part of the exhibition features a wide selection of product designs and furniture, produced by Hayon Studio over the last two decades, accompanied by process samples, raw materials, and exploded views of some of the pieces, “offering an educational vision of the designer, allowing visitors to discover many details that are not normally visible,” the studio shares.
Next, ‘The Fantasy’ room contains a sample of Hayon’s latest works in its purely artistic perspective, with five large-format canvases and two sculptures. In gentle contrast, the hall housing the ‘Mediterranean Digital Baroque’ installation presents one of the artist’s first exhibitions, held in 2003 at the prestigious David Gill gallery in London, and which has been part of shows in museums and exhibitions around the world.
An explosive work focusing on colour and expressiveness, the ‘Masquemask’ space is an exhibition conceived for the LODZ design museum in Poland, made by artisans from the city, and comprising seven large-format tapestries-masks—which are suspended—allowing onlookers to traverse at ease between the exhibited pieces.
Moving onward, the ‘Crystal Room’ contains an expansive selection of pieces, many of them limited or unique editions, produced by the best craftsmen of iconic brands such as Baccarat, or in workshops with centuries of experience in Murano glass crafting. The ‘Ceramic Room’ features a hefty collection of both functional and artistic objects designed by Hayon, made of all kinds of ceramics by masters from the best companies in the sector, such as Lladró.
Treating viewers to the progression of the work in a single space, the next section titled ‘Mon cirque + Fauna tapestries’ brings together works from two collections: first, a tribute to the circus universe symbolising the desire for artistic freedom, and the next, a series of large-format tapestries, recreating a diverse collection of animals with yarn in varying textures.
The ‘Mesamachine + sketchbooks’ exhibition space features sketchbooks, notebooks, and loose drawings condensing years of work, allowing visitors to get closer to Hayon’s raw, hand-made, creative process. Bringing ‘Jaime Hayon: InfinitaMente’ to a theatrical close is the ‘Cabinets of Curiosities,’ which takes the artist’s most personal world into a cupboard that collects dozens of objects, notes, prototypes, samples, materials, and other elements straight from his workplace and home.
As a retrospective exhibition, ‘Jaime Hayon: InfinitaMente’ shows off the entire oeuvre of the multifaceted artist and designer's career spanning two decades, displaying his explorations of forms, geometries, colours, and manifestations of imaginary, almost child-like concepts.
"In the year in which Valencia is World Design Capital, we could not leave out a tribute to the work of Jaime Hayon, one of the most outstanding creators in our country, whose work combines design and art, craftsmanship and industry, showing, from Valencia, the presence of design in people's daily lives, in everyday and decorative objects, and how artistic pieces can reach all citizens," says the director of the Consorci de Museus and the CCCC, José Luis Pérez Pont.
“In 2022 our commitment to design has strongly defined the CCCC's programming. We have organised and produced six exhibitions to celebrate this year, in which Valencia holds the ‘World Design Capital’ status. One of the highlights is presented today, with an exhibition that reviews and recognises the work of Jaime Hayon, one of the most prominent creators of our country and a benchmark of Spanish design internationally, who has chosen to live in Valencia and locate here his studio’s base of operations. The Centre del Carme brings together for the first time the entire creative universe of the artist in a large format exhibition that offers a broad tour of his career, ranging from paintings to sculpture, furniture, ceramics, glass, tapestries, graphics or glass,” he continues.
The collaboration between the Consorci de Museus de la Comunitat Valenciana and World Design Capital Valencia 2022 has made a significant mark on the exhibition program of the CCCC. The inauguration of the joyous ‘Jaime Hayon: InfinitaMente’ exhibition meets one of the main objectives of the World Design Capital—to bring art and design closer to the public.
In the words of Xavi Calvo, director of World Design Capital Valencia 2022, “the suitability of presenting this exhibition in such an important year for Valencia could not be more convenient. Jaime Hayon is undoubtedly the most international Spanish designer in the world, not to say that he is simply the best-known designer in the world. In the year in which, in addition, he has received Spain’s National Design Award in Valencia, he celebrates this exhibition that is an explosion of colour, creativity, talent, and exquisiteness at the Center del Carme, the space that has brought together most of our programming. If we wanted the world to look at Valencia, now they will do it from the field of design, creativity, art and anyone who wants to be surprised by the brightness and beauty of everything Jaime does.”
‘Jaime Hayon: InfinitaMente’ will remain on display at the Centre del Carme Cultura Contemporània in Valencia, Spain, from September 22, 2022 — April 16, 2023.
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