Piano Panier Piano Panier…
The Shopping Cart as Seen by Paprika and "Good Design" at an Affordable Price
Until March 31, 2013
Free admission at all times
Design Lab
Liliane and David M. Stewart Pavilion - Level 2
In connection with this season dedicated to families, the Montreal graphic design firm Paprika has turned the Design Lab into a supermarket by diverting shopping carts and tin cans from their original purposes. Piano Panier Piano Panier… is a playful world of brilliant colour. A selection of objects permits visitors to discover beautiful "good design" objects at an affordable price.
The installation Piano Panier Piano Panier… takes a fresh look at overlooked everyday objects, which are transformed by the use of graphic elements (images – in this case, three-dimensional objects, colours and typography) and by their organization in space, like the page layout in a print medium. The supermarket carts, painted green, are nested in a row, creating an optical illusion of infinity. The words "piano" and "panier" inscribed on alternate handle bars refer to an elocution exercise and to the advertising slogans often displayed on the bars, while suggesting the rhythmic sound of a cart in motion. This elocution exercise was popularized by the characters in the Quebec children's television series Passe-Partout, broadcast in Quebec and Ontario from 1977 to 1998.The stacks of cans also suggest the weekly chore of grocery shopping.
The supermarket of design
The installation, in line with the theme introduced by Paprika, is rounded out by a selection of affordable "good design" objects for the home by designers and brand names from Canada and abroad: A di Alessi, Bodum, Ikea PS, Magis and Toma. Design enthusiasts should make sure to visit the exhibition Craving for Design: Kitchen Design from the 18th Century to Tomorrow at the Stewart Museum on Saint Helen's Island, where they will find kitchen utensils taken from the Stewart Museum's Hotterman collection (eighteenth century), and the Museum's Brill collection (twentieth century) and Liliane and David M. Stewart Collection.
Paprika is the outcome of the ongoing visionary partnership established in 1991. Co-founders Joanne Lefebvre and Louis Gagnon, respectively the firm's general manager and artistic director, work with celebrated clients in numerous fields, designing for them in a variety of media. For the MMFA, they notably created the flag signage for The Museum Is Growing (2009) and the expansion of the Studios Art & Education Michel de la Chenelière (2011), and designed the publications The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier (2011) and Beyond Pop Art: Tom Wesselmann (2012). Paprika has made its mark both at home and abroad, garnering over 700 prizes for excellence awarded by such prestigious organizations as AIGA, Communication Arts, Grafika, Graphis and I.D. Magazine.