Rajdar
Coll-Part

Rajdar Coll-Part is difficult to define. By turns a writer, filmmaker, stage director, set designer, as well as a creator and designer, he has developed a multifaceted practice that is deliberately undisciplined.

Based in Paris, where he lives and works, Rajdar Coll-Part has been exhibiting his work since 1986. He has taken part in numerous solo and group exhibitions, as well as contemporary art fairs, notably Art Frankfurt 1998. His projects take on a variety of forms, always infused with a narrative and critical dimension. He also published Quelle horreur ! (1990) and Quelle horreur 2 ! (1998), two landmark books that extend his offbeat universe into editorial form.

His furniture does not merely aim to be functional: it says something, comments, interprets. “His visual universe draws as much from art history as from popular culture: Duchamp’s ready-mades, Ionesco’s theatre of the absurd, the Memphis movement, Jacques Carelman’s catalogue of impossible objects, and the improvised poetry of Fischli & Weiss.”

In a different yet equally committed vein, the “F. Design™” series is rooted in a deliberately ambiguous fascination with industrial design. Behind this name, whose meaning remains suggestive, lies an ironic critique of its excesses and deviations. Presented notably at Art Paris 2011 with Galerie Baumgarten (Freiburg), the series offers a critical reading of design as a system.

His solo exhibitions, such as “… en tout cas, ça fonctionne” (Galerie Ventilo, Paris, 2007), “À prendre ou à laisser”(Galerie Cat Berro, Paris, 2014–2015), and “Meubles Moraux” (Susse Frères, Paris, 2020), remain faithful to his free and completely undisciplined approach.

“In this theatre of the absurd, furniture acquires a form of consciousness: a table walks forward on stocking-clad legs, a wardrobe sways like a dancer, a console transforms into an instrument of refined torture…”