At the Villa Cavrois, sculptures sewn with art thread

From one villa to another… Three years ago, the Lille resident Xavier Brisoux presented, as a fashion finalist at the Hyères Festival, architectural silhouettes made entirely of knitwear at the Villa Noailles. Until March 5, here we are back in an exhibition “high sculptures to wear”, as he calls these funny artisanal shields, hand-knitted and endowed with beautiful reliefs, at the villa Cavrois, a historic monument close to Roubaix, restored in 2003. “I see it as a logical continuation, because Noailles and Cavrois were both imagined by Robert Mallet-Stevens”, recalls Xavier Brisoux, evoking the modernist architect (1886-1945) who also directed the Beaux-Arts in Lille.

“In the same way that Mallet-Stevens had decided for the facade of the Villa Cavrois to use only solid yellow briquettes, without having to cut them, I never stop my yarn and build textile pieces from a single holding. This taste for continuity can resonate from the building to the sculptures. » Designed to be worn over a body, these exceptional knits are however static here. Staged on metal structures, they seem to float. Way to prove what the forties has been repeating for a long time: “Knitting is a craft. »