ANOTHER GRAMMAR OF ORNAMENT
PROJECT ROOM #18
2025

Project room – tiny room
Dan Thawley

In the centenary year of the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris, India Mahdavi Editions presents Project Room N°18, Another Grammar of Ornament curated by Dan Thawley as a part of the MATTER and SHAPE (hors les murs) programme for 2025.

Following their first collaboration for the exhibition Foreign Flowers in 2024, this second exhibition provokes an unexpected discourse between the 19th and 21st centuries through the subject of ornament, stemming from the canonical work The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones (1856) and the contemporary response New Grammar of Ornament by the German architect and artist Thomas Weil (2021). Here, Weil’s life-long dedication to the international vocabulary of decorative forms comes to life, featuring original paintings and sketches in conversation with historic works and contemporary commissions, provoking new conversations between unlikely bedfellows.

In a nod to the chapters of Weil's book, Another Grammar of Ornament expands from the Project Room: engaging with geometric and minimalist ornamentation at n°29 rue de Bellechasse, and exploring floral ornamentation inside the Tiny Room metres away at n°3 Rue las Cases.

ft. Anne Dangar (AUS), Annick Tapernoux (BE), Benoît Lalloz (FR), BMDO (AUS), Burlina Moshed (IT/IR), cc-tapis (IT), Concorde (IT), Dana Arbib (USA), Fortuny (IT), Golnar Khalesi (IR), India Mahdavi (IR/EG), Julian Harold Ghosi (FR/IR), Lobmeyr (AT), Pierre Marie (FR), Sacha Parent & Valentine Tiraboschi (FR), Saskia De Brauw (NL), Simon Skinner (SE), Sophie Toporkoff (FR) and Thomas Weil (DE)

© tom dagnas