Wabi-Sabi Mood

Wabi-sabi, the ancient philosophy that values imperfection, has dominated Japanese art at its highest level.

Today, it is becoming an “endangered species”. Worse still… this aesthetic of the timeless, which feeds on the long term, even enriching itself with the patina of time, has been recuperated by the mass-market decorating industry, and is now used in communications relating to consumer goods that are unfashionable and disposable: a total antimony.

Wabi-sabi cannot be reduced to formulas or ready-made expressions without destroying its essence. Hence, the Wabi-Sabi Lab is an original and demanding event bringing together some 20 players who embody the values of wabi-sabi and/or the creative or even experimental dimension suggested by the suffix “lab.”

Wabi-sabi Lab. What it is: A bias, a selection of brands, galleries, artists, craftsmen, designers, publishers, material suppliers, in phase with our intention, our vision, our affirmed tastes with all the assumed subjectivity that our choices imply.

What it is not: Wabi-sabi Lab is not a classic trade show with stands, exhibitors and brands juxtaposed, sometimes without coherence. There are no colossal exhibition halls, but rather a place of prestige without ostentation.

This publication is a crossbreeding, driven by the selective eye of a pair of insatiably curious bargain hunters. A manifesto that invokes the very foundations of wabi-sabi, far removed from the fad it has become.

Text in English and French.