Jules Lobgeois

Jules Lobgeois was born in 1994 in Oise. He lives and works in a small village in the south of the region. It is in this village surrounded by forests where his ancestors lived that he finds the inspiration as well as the wood and steel he needs to create.
Trained in design at the Ensaama Olivier de Serres in Paris, then at the Laab in Rennes where he obtained his Higher Diploma in Applied Arts, he developed a passion for sculpture at the end of his studies.
It is while working in the Banneel workshops restoring Jean Prouvé's structures that he learns the mastery of steel. His taste for solid wood sculpture comes from his collaboration with the artist and sculptor Kaspar Hamacher, whom he assisted for more than a year in Belgium.
Returning to France in 2018, he opens his workshop where he produces the pieces he designs by hand. Halfway between functional object and sculpture, each piece that Jules Lobgeois creates comes from a search for purity of form. That is to say, objects created with as few types of shapes as possible.
His work has been exhibited during Design Week (Paris, 2018), at the Grand Bassin during the Ateliers d'Art de France competition (Roubaix, 2019), at the Cumulables exhibition (Paris 3, 2019), at Maison & Objet (Villepinte 2019), as well as for Collectible with the Modern Shapes Gallery (Brussels, 2020).
For Jules Lobgeois the resource must be local. During the year he criss-crosses the forests of the Oise in search of inspiration, forms and resources. This is how he collects wood - dead or from trees lying down in increasingly frequent storms - to dry it in his workshop. When the time comes, the tree, which has become a piece of wood, is carved to be reborn in a new form.
Photos: EUGENIE TOUZE