François Bauchet À table !
Apil 11th
︎︎︎ Mai 23th, 2026
François Bauchet: À table ! Behind this command lies an invitation. Not an order, then, but an invitation to share a moment together. Everything takes place around tables and on tables. François Bauchet Let’s eat! is an exhibition of tables and objects. The table is perhaps the object that François Bauchet has studied most closely. Coffee tables, dining tables, desks, side tables, telephone tables, workbenches – what else?
It is no coincidence that the table is one of the objects he has designed most frequently. It is worth noting that François Bauchet trained as a visual artist at the Bourges School of Fine Arts. Tables are, however, among the objects most frequently studied by visual artists, particularly sculptors. We won’t list all the examples as there are too many, but apart from Donald Judd’s famous tables, there are, for instance, those by Sol LeWitt, Richard Artschwager and Claudio Parmigiani, as well as all the works that explore this object by Robert Therrien, Charles Ray, Tony Cragg, Ai Weiwei, and so on and so forth.
As Hannah Arendt says in The Human Condition (1958): “Around the table, we find the young and the not-so-young, the generosity of nature and the grace of the spirit. The table brings everyone and everything around us together, in a spirit of gratitude. It opens up new perspectives and inspires, whilst remaining, in a sense, invisible. But if we remove the table and the bond that unifies and reveals, everything disappears.”
This richness highlighted by Hanna Arendt is what the artists and François Bauchet perceive. The table brings us together and separates us. It is a particularly rich object, a metaphor for the civilised world that makes us feel both close and distant. The table can also, by analogy, become an architectural element and, ultimately, even more so than the house, its origin. The table is community; it is also, quite simply, humanity. Which is what makes us more than just animals. The table as seen by the artists and by François Bauchet is not an exercise in construction, nor an exercise in production, but a powerful exercise imbued with multiple stories and meanings. François Bauchet’s tables transcend the idea we might have of a table. A table by François Bauchet is not an exercise in design but an exercise in meaning. François Bauchet’s tables are as much answers to the question: “What is a table?” as they are the question itself: “What can a table be?”. Consequently, like all his work, they go to the heart of the matter whilst incorporating the ideas of monument and the monumental.
The 1980 work “C’est aussi une chaise” has a table counterpart, created slightly later in 1985. Like the chair mentioned, this small table—which is clearly its continuation (the width is identical)—highlights the constituent elements of a table: a base and a top. However, whilst the “Grande table carrée’ at the Fondation Cartier from 1984 demonstrates the assembly of MDF panels to deconstruct a volume, this small table synthesises the volume of a table by producing an effect of mass. Made of wood and painted in an unexpected pastel colour, the table plays on this effect of mass to reveal itself as particularly light. In stark contrast, the “Grande table carrée’ proves to be of considerable weight, even though it stands on slender legs that lift it off the floor. Playing on this effect, we encounter François Bauchet’s constant interplay between lightness and heaviness, between mass and void. It is a further way of blurring the lines and maintaining that sense of uncertainty about what we see, which is characteristic of his works.
Accompanying the tables, the exhibition displays objects placed upon them. The table, having become a space, can then accommodate items that evoke meals, offerings, flowers and fruit. Although François Bauchet has designed a few sets of crockery and cutlery (Ercuis, Haviland, Guy Degrenne), we have chosen to exhibit objects whose characteristics bring them closer to furniture in the sense of furnishings. Indeed, what characterises our selection is this effect of mass that we particularly appreciate in his work. Furnishing the surface of a table is not common. Yet this is precisely the effect produced by François Bauchet’s objects. Just like furniture, we are faced with objects of unusual power. They thus inhabit the surface of tables and almost become extensions of them, made of the same mass. When looking at the “Vase Dominique” and the “Centre de table Françoise”, Vallauris Collection, 1999, a shift in perception becomes apparent. The Dominique vase takes the general shape of a jug but is twice as large and finished in a matt black. The vase, though present, has a disconcerting effect and functions almost as a void, a black hole around which the space is organised. As for the “Françoise Centrepiece”, due to its dimensions, it almost becomes a table in its own right. It is a question of scale, but not only that.
As in certain paintings by Giorgio Morandi, we no longer know what we are looking at. Are they vases, boxes, pots? Landscapes? Spaces? Where are we? Between the surface and what is placed upon it, there is here a sort of effect of multiplication and enlargement. The table multiplied by the object placed upon it. Beyond light, colour and function, what is really at stake is presence. We might then ask ourselves: what is it that makes this object sit there before me, and what is it that makes it resist me?
Photos : © Yann Bohac / A1043
