Konstantin Grcic curates ‘Match, Design & Sport – A Story Looking to the Future’ at Musée du Luxembourg, to coincide with the Paris 2024 Olympic Games (until 11 August 2024)
The Musée du Luxembourg on Paris’ Left Bank is best known for hosting exhibitions on historical painting. But to coincide with the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Chris Dercon – when he was president of GrandPalaisRmn, the cultural institution to which the museum belongs – asked
'It would be true to say that sport was my first design teacher,' Grcic says. 'When I was a kid, I was obsessed with looking at sports equipment and studied catalogues about it for days, weeks, months, years. I think it really informed my becoming a designer. I feel that I have learnt so much from this equipment which is always at the forefront of technological development.'
Hirondelle Superb, Manufrance, 1889, collection du musée d'art et d'industrie de la ville de Saint-EtienneGrcic’s own work does not feature in the exhibition. With no clear brief, he set out to broaden the scope of the sport-and-design relationship far beyond developments in equipment.
His starting point was to look at antiquity. In collaboration with GrandPalaisRmn’s moulding atelier, his studio made an acrylic-cement reproduction of Myron’s bronze sculpture of a discus thrower,. Elastic therapeutic tape on the copy and a jar of bodybuilding powder refer to how today’s athletes stay in shape.