In Miami, La Prairie Collaborated With Spanish Artist Pablo Valbuena to Present a One-Night-Only Installation on the Beach

Beneath a resplendent sunset
over Miami Beach last Thursday, Swiss luxury skincare company La
Prairie unveiled a site-specific light installation by Spanish
artist Pablo Valbuena.

Entitled Wave (2019), the artwork was an assemblage of
towering aluminum monoliths outfitted with LED lights and embedded
into the beachfront. Come nightfall, the lights would climb and
descend each pole with a fluid elegance that mimicked the hypnotic
movement of the rolling waves nearby. The ocean also served as a
natural audio component enhancement to the piece.

“The sunset, the colors, the
sound of the [ocean]… Wave is an artistic response to this location,”
Valbuena said in a brief speech during the vernissage. Attendees
were then invited to wander amid the illuminated posts to
experience the installation from various perspectives.

With art and innovation at the
forefront of La Prairie’s ethos, the Swiss beauty company
approached Valbuena, whose practice investigates space and time by
way of kinetic light installations that react to their
surroundings, to create a new work forged according to the theme,
The Shape of Light. The commission was presented alongside the 2019
edition of Art Basel Miami Beach, which ran from December 5 to
8. 

Wave was also a fitting addition to Valbuena’s
“Array“ series, which employs light and motion to
create perception-bending artworks. “The
series explores the
transformation of form through time,” Valbuena said in a statement.
“These installations are made up of an array of moving points of
light that gradually reveal and conceal parts of a movement. They
create a moment where we stop seeing isolated elements and begin
seeing the whole.” As such, Wave illustrated the ocean’s ebb and flow through
the precise choreography of blinking lights.

After Wave’s reveal, guests were transported to the
seventh floor of 1111 Lincoln Road, where rows of impeccably set
banquet tables populated an unexpected space: an open-air parking
garage with exquisite views of the Miami skyline. The lot was
designed by award-winning Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de
Meuron, the Basel-based masterminds behind the Pérez Art Museum
Miami, Tate Modern in London, and the so-called “Bird’s Nest”
stadium built for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

“[Herzog & de Meuron] said that
this building was the most radical work they have ever done,
describing it as pure Miami Beach—all muscle without clothes,” La
Prairie CEO Patrick Rasquinet told the room. “This space has been
designed to let the natural light in, and to observe the Miami
skyline. I think this is an unusual and unique place to continue
our journey into The Shape of Light.” 

Dinner was a four-course
gastronomic voyage from darkness to light. The meal began with
“Absolute Darkness Pierced,” a jet black soft-boiled egg topped
with black Ossetra caviar and served on a black plate with black
utensils. Following the next two courses, entitled “Delicate Light
Unveiled” and “Darkness and Light Fused,” the night concluded with
“Light Celebrated,” a white meringue dome housing a white passion
fruit and Florida citrus tart embellished with yuzu caviar pearls.
Caviar from various sources was integrated into each course—a nod
to La Prairie’s Skin Caviar collection, which is all about
achieving beauty through light.

Earlier this year, La Prairie
introduced a new science story involving two of its recent
revolutionary products: White Caviar Illuminating Pearl Infusion
and White Caviar Crème
Extraordinaire, both of which are engineered to boost the skin’s
luminosity when used together. Over a decade of research led to La Prairie’s
invention of a tyrosinase-blocking molecule called Lumidose, which
sets the White Caviar collection apart from any other skincare
product on the market. In April, La Prairie celebrated the
re-introduction of
their newest products at Dia:Beacon, an art
institution in New York’s Dutchess County, which famously houses
light-based masterpieces by the likes of Dan Flavin, Bruce Nauman,
and Mary Corse. A new white caviar innovation will debut on
laprairie.com on January 21, 2020.

Art has long been an essential
part of La Prairie’s philosophy. In 2017, the brand partnered with
the Swiss-founded art fair, Art Basel, to commission new work from
cross-disciplinary artists who take inspiration from like-minded
themes which support the brand values and latest innovations. La
Prairie has since collaborated with French architect Paul Coudamy,
Berlin-based conceptual artist Julian Charrière, Swiss sculptor and
photographer Manon Wertenbroek, Swiss architect Mario Botta, and
South Korean light artist Chul Hyun Ahn for the Art Basel fairs in
Basel, Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Miami Beach. This summer, the
beauty company also exhibited work by three young
photographers who were tasked with conceiving a series of
photographs that explored the power of the female
gaze. 

Notably, Valbuena’s
Wave in Miami was the first public artwork
commissioned by La Prairie, though it was a short-lived,
one-night-only phenomenon on view to the public for the night of
December 6. In 2020, the beauty company will announce new artist
collaborations and projects that similarly explore the parallels
between original works of art and La Prairie’s design-forward
ethos.

The post In Miami, La Prairie Collaborated With Spanish
Artist Pablo Valbuena to Present a One-Night-Only Installation on
the Beach appeared first on artnet News.