French designer Matali Crasset has designed a set of carafes and glasses for tasting olive oil at an exhibition inside a former olive oil-mill in La Valette-du-Var, France.

Top: Double skin, 2010 - Olive oil carafe
Above: Présence argentée (“Silvery presence”), 2010 - Olive oil carafe

Called Nature Intérieure, the installation at art centre Moulin de la Valette also features wooden representations of trees, linked to the ceiling on green strings like marionette puppets.

Above: L’échappée verte (“Green escapade”), 2010 - Olive oil tasting glass

The specially-designed carafes and glasses are set out in a tasting area, where visitors can sample the oils.

The exhibition will run from 5 June - 20 September.

Photographs are by Cécil Mathieu, courtesy of Gandy gallery.

Here's some information from Crasset:

Matali Crasset: Nature Intérieure (Interior Nature)

Moulin de la Valette

Because the Moulin de la Valette contemporary art center was originally an olive oil mill, leading French designer Matali Crasset wanted her exhibition there to reflect the physical and symbolic qualities of olive oil, virtual “vegetable gold”.

“I love to base my work on the context I’m presented with. Here I pursue my work on a plant theme, which makes perfect sense for this art center, where art lives in osmosis with the Baudouvin Gardens.” Matali offers her vision of nature.

The exhibition has two parts: the first is dedicated to one of Matali Crasset’s personal projects, and the second to collaborative works. Matali’s work is divided into two areas. The works produced in collaboration with the École des Beaux Arts de Toulon (Toulon School of Fine Arts) are exhibited in a third area of the center.

Nature Intérieure (Interior Nature)

First, we wander through an orchard of marionette-like tree beings hanging from the ceiling. They set off a mystical atmosphere, seeming to commune with the spirit of the old mill. These sculptures represent complicity between the tree, which offers up its fruit, and the person who picks them. Time is suspended to magnify this giving. Frozen images symbolize a mix or symbiosis of natural and artificial.

We then move on into the Tasting Room, the scene of an imaginary ritual where guests taste olive oil at a table transpierced by and sheltered by a magical tree. Fil-ter-ed light makes us intimate witnesses to the ritual. We share a moment suspended in time. We find ourselves in a meticulous scene where plant-life vibrations seem to fill the air. We discover olive oil vessels designed especially for the occasion. There are household carafes made only of glass, that protect and magnify. There are also smaller vessels for individual tasting.

All of the projects were created especially for the exhibition Nature intérieure. This exhibition was co-produced by the Moulin de la Valette and the Gandy gallery.

See also:

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In Vino Veritas by Matali Crasset	This&That by Fabrica	Cru by Sebastian Bergne