Who expects to find an Osvaldo Borsani armchair or a Serge Mouille ceiling lamp for sale above an Aldi grocery store? The new Sceners Gallery is a surprise: a loft-like space 770 sq m in size, reached by a narrow staircase next to a discount supermarket in eastern Paris. The design gallery has been operating quietly for the past six months, selling to in-the-know collectors. Now it's open to the general public, by appointment only.
Step inside Sceners Gallery, Paris
The public face of the gallery is Jonathan Haddad, who seems to have sprung up out of nowhere. Self-taught and not quite 27 years old, he has a passion and natural talent for design and interior architecture, along with a brilliant network of collaborators. Living between Paris, Tel Aviv, Antwerp, and London, he created the Sceners brand as a creative studio about three or four years ago. 'I was curating collections,' he says. 'When we started to handle bigger collections and more pieces, we looked for a space, and found this crazy place two and a half years ago.'
After signing the lease, the team learned that the building had originally been designed by Gustave Eiffel's studio for a mechanical toy company. Certain elements could not be touched, but they were able to do more than a year of major renovations, 'editing and editing, then building it up', says creative director Olivier Leone. They removed walls to expose the magnificent atrium ceiling, installed concrete floors and a mezzanine, and stripped the walls back to bare plaster. Haddad covered one enormous wall with oxidised metal.
The design on offer, primarily 20th-century, comes mostly from the collection of Haddad's business partner, David Atlan, and will change every four months. The eclectic selection combines big hitters and lesser-known names, including Haddad himself, who designed an oversized wood coffee table inspired by sacred geometry.
Leone, like Haddad a child of the 1990s, explains, 'It's a gallery with a generational intention. We want to democratise design for a new generation.' He notes that younger people might not be able to afford the Jorge Zalszupin coffee table, but could be tempted to splurge on a more recent piece of furniture by Rei Kawakubo.
The name 'Sceners' refers to the staging of a movie scene, and the teamwork that goes into creating a dialogue between characters and environment. Here, the mise-en-scène is a 'conversation between pieces that we might not normally find together’, says Haddad. For example, the ebonised wood, parchment, bone, and goat leather of a ‘Sabre’ chair by Carlo Bugatti (circa 1900) play off the white elm and moose antler of a Tomb Stag chair designed by Rick Owens a century later.
Haddad points to a metal mesh chair by Shiro Kuramata, sitting next to Shiro Tsujimura's wood-fired ‘Shigaraki’ jar. Only about 20 years separate the two. 'One looks so sleek and modern, while the other looks ancient, even though it's more contemporary.'
Art is also part of the mix, with works for sale from guest curators such as Hélène Nguyen-Ban, founder of the art collector app Docent. Her impressive contributions to the current line-up include Steven Parrino, Ed Ruscha, and a rare Yves Klein fire painting, hanging behind a lipstick-red Art Nouveau corner bench by Koloman Moser, with a George Nakashima slab table thrown in just for fun.
Haddad says these groupings reflect how people arrange their collections at home. 'Something from the early 20th century, another from the 1950s, an art piece from the 1970s, a beautiful vase from your grandmother... It's the way we live with pieces [and that's how] we are showcasing them.'
Sceners Gallery, 88 bld de Ménilmontant, 75020 Paris, scenersgallery.com
