signé is pleased to present :

Martin Szekely - Objets de valeur

October 10 - December 19, 2026

Marking his first gallery exhibition in Paris in fifteen years, Objets de valeur will bring together a group of unique pieces developed since 2020 in his workshop in Normandy.

With this body of work, the designer adopted a new approach within his practice, producing every piece himself. Each work originated in volumes of wood that had reached the end of an initial use: fragments of beams, boatyard chocks and elements sourced in shipyards. Already squared, sawn, drilled or marked by their history, these materials possessed forms and characteristics of their own, which guided the making of each piece.

“In my eyes, these pieces of wood are a treasure, and I feel obligated to keep them as close as possible to their original condition, each with its own characteristics of shape, color and variety of wood; never modifying them beyond a certain limit, at the risk of dispelling their inherent power.” Martin Szekely

The existing volume, its dimensions, damage and irregularities determined the strategy adopted for each work. Holes, cracks, signs of wear and other alterations were neither erased nor used as decorative effects: they were integrated into the very conditions of the project.

Using large handsaws, Martin Szekely intervened through an economy of gestures and transformations. The pieces were neither sanded nor varnished. A few cuts were enough to turn a solid volume into a hollow object and allow a use to emerge.

This new body of research extends an inquiry begun in the late 1990s into the withdrawal of drawing as the origin of the object, made manifest in the exhibition Ne plus dessiner at the Centre Pompidou in 2011.

The transition from advanced industrial materials to pre-existing materials, and from technological processes to elementary gestures, does not constitute a return to craftsmanship, but rather the continuation of the same inquiry by other means: to determine the conditions necessary for an object to exist.

To accompany the exhibition, the book Objets de valeur, volume VIII of the Série Blanche, will be published by éditions B42.