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“The human gesture carries memory. It is imperfect, singular and embodied. In a world dominated by repetition and automation, gesture becomes a space of resistance.”

Pauline Guerrier says this plainly, without romanticising it, and it neatly sums up why her work feels so at home inside ‘Beyond Our Horizons,’ the exhibition opening at la Galerie du 19M from 29 January to 26 April 2026. Presented by Chanel’s métiers d’art hub between Paris and Aubervilliers, the show arrives in France after a successful run in Tokyo and centres on a dialogue that is slow, physical and deeply human: Japanese and French craftsmanship in conversation.

But if you want to understand the soul of Le19M’s latest blockbuster exhibition, you don’t start in the pristine, Rudy Ricciotti-designed gallery itself. You start down the road, in a former perfume factory filled with concrete dust and drying paint.

This is POUSH, the sprawling artists’ incubator in Aubervilliers and the current workspace of Guerrier. The French artist, a Beaux-Arts de Paris alumnus who cut her teeth under the legendary Giuseppe Penone, is the perfect guide for this journey. Her practice is built on what she calls the “anthropology of the gesture,” trekking from Italian glassblowers to weavers in Benin to rescue ancestral techniques from oblivion.

Those two rhythms came together at Le19M, Chanel’s purpose-built home for its eleven Maisons d’art, including Desrues, Lemarié, Lesage, Montex and Maison Michel. Together with nearly thirty French and Japanese artisans, they have turned the gallery into a space of wonder and exchange. Curated by a collective of five creatives – including Momoko Ando and Aska Yamashita – the show has expanded for its Paris debut, with ten new designers joining to push the limits of how heritage and innovation can feed off each other.

“This exhibition embodies the dialogue between the French artisans of the Maisons d’art of le19M and their Japanese counterparts. It illustrates how heritage and innovation can coexist and feed off each other,” says Bruno Pavlovsky, President of le19M.

When Guerrier first entered the workshops, the connection was immediate. “At POUSH, my practice is raw – I don’t go looking for precision right away,” Guerrier tells us. “But then that energy gets filtered through the hands of the artisans. It’s not a conflict; they need each other.”

Her contribution to ‘Beyond Our Horizons’ is distilled into the Tako Tsubo series, which encapsulates the exhibition’s wider ambitions. The starting point was a small but deeply personal object: a mother-of-pearl music box found years ago at the Saint-Ouen flea market. That discovery pushed Guerrier towards Japanese techniques such as marquetry and lacquer, and philosophies including kintsugi and wabi-sabi. 

“What is sacred is this return to the object itself, to its capacity for repair, and to the idea that a fracture can be considered a strength rather than a flaw.” For Guerrier, the music box remains a tangible meeting point between French craft history and Japanese thought.

To translate these ideas materially, she worked with Maison Desrues, the historic house known for crafting Chanel’s buttons and costume jewellery. Guerrier delved into their archives, selecting precious and semi-precious beads to explore the art of repair. The reference to kintsugi is clear, but never too literal.

“The beading acts like a reparative skin,” she explains. She isn’t hiding the cracks; on the contrary, she’s making them visible and precious. It’s a direct translation of the wabi-sabi worldview (finding beauty in imperfection) executed with the hyper-precision of French luxury.

The exhibition space itself refuses to be a typical white cube. Designed by architect Tsuyoshi Tane, the scenography treats the gallery as a living home – or an “artist’s house.” Lantern-like structures guide visitors through worktable environments and interior gardens, making the experience relatively more intimate.

This emphasis on inhabiting the space reflects a reverence for the long game. Guerrier speaks with genuine admiration for Japan’s ‘Living National Treasures’ – masters recognised for their lifelong dedication to a specific skill. It is a system that values the repository of knowledge within a human body over the final product. Even without direct collaboration for this specific series, that spirit saturates her work. In an age obsessed with the instant, her practice, and indeed the entire exhibition, acts as a cultural brake.

“I would like visitors to leave with a heightened awareness of gesture and the time it requires. That they perceive, beyond the forms, the sum of hands, skills and attention necessary for these works to exist,” says Guerrier.

“If something is to remain, it would be the idea that this exhibition is a living material. That behind each piece lies a story of shared gestures and transmission, which continues to live beyond the exhibition itself.”

‘Beyond Our Horizons: From Tokyo to Paris’ runs from 29 January to 26 April 2026 at la Galerie du 19M.

Discover more here.

photography. courtesy of Clarisse-Ain
words. Gennaro Costanzo

Usually, a Bespoke Rolls-Royce commission involves colour-matching a specific flower from a private estate or sourcing wood from a centuries-old forest. But for Goodwood’s latest client – a tech entrepreneur with a serious case of 1980s nostalgia – the brief was a little different: make it play.

The new Black Badge Ghost Gamer is the first-ever Rolls-Royce inspired by the ‘Golden Age’ of arcade gaming. It is a gloriously retro-futurist love letter to the 8-bit era, transforming the world’s most luxurious motor car into an immersive, deep-pocketed tribute to the digital worlds of ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘Pac-Man.’

While the marque has previously flirted with hidden codes in the cryptic Wraith Kryptos collection and its vehicles have long been digital status symbols in franchises like ‘Forza Motorsport,’ this marks the first time Goodwood has physically engineered the 8-bit universe into a bespoke commission.

The exterior sets the mood immediately. Finished in a dual-tone Salamanca Blue and Diamond Black, the car mimics the neon-lit aesthetic of a dark arcade hall. But look closer at the hand-painted Coachline and you’ll find the commission’s mascot: the “Cheeky Alien,” a green, 8-bit character composed of 89 individual pixels.

However, the real cheat codes are found inside. The interior has been designed as a hands-on game of exploration, filled with hidden Easter eggs. The tread-plates greet the driver with ‘INSERT COIN’, ‘PRESS START’ and ‘LEVEL UP’ in pixelated fonts. The seats are embroidered with Player 1 through Player 4, stitched in electric hues that mimic the flicker of a vintage CRT monitor against the Black and Casden Tan leather.

“This brief was particularly exciting,” says Joshua McCandless, the Bespoke Designer behind the project. “Over the course of a month, we immersed ourselves in the 8-bit aesthetic that defined late 70s and early 80s gaming. We wanted the client to feel that the motor car itself was an immersive experience – and that every time they stepped inside, it would recreate the same thrill they felt when they pressed ‘start’ on an arcade machine for the very first time.”

The roof, however, is on another level. The famous Starlight Headliner has been reprogrammed into a ‘Pixel Blaster’ formation. Instead of a silent night sky, the fibre-optic lights form 80-bitmapped battlecruisers and its signature shooting star feature is now re-coded to simulate laser fire pulsing across the ceiling. 

Even the craftsmanship gets a digital remix. The Waterfall between the rear seats features a hand-painted lunar landscape with stainless steel “flying saucers,” while hidden aliens are tucked away on the air vents and picnic tables, waiting to be discovered.

Delivered to a client who clearly believes that who dies with the highest score wins, the Black Badge Ghost Gamer proves that even the most serious luxury brand on Earth knows how to have fun.

Discover more here.

photography. courtesy of Rolls-Royce
words. Gennaro Costanzo

Who knew pianos and luxury cars had so much in common? Steinway & Sons and Bentley Motors, apparently. The two heritage houses have joined forces for a collaboration that celebrates precision, craftsmanship and design through the launch of Steinway’s ‘Ultra Black’ and ‘Ultra White’ limited editions.

Built in Hamburg, just fifty-two of these grand pianos will exist worldwide, evenly split between the two finishes. Each takes cues from both brands’ most recognisable signatures: Steinway’s timeless silhouettes and Bentley’s sleek monochrome palette. The Ultra Black, finished in a deep Jet Black that’s been a favourite in Bentley’s veneer catalogue, feels sculptural and commanding; its mirror image, the Ultra White, draws from the carmaker’s Arctic White, luminous and modern in tone.

“The Ultra Black and Ultra White editions embody Steinway’s ability to honour our heritage while exploring new expressions of design,” confirms Guido Zimmermann, President of Steinway & Sons Europe. “These pianos are not only instruments of the highest musical quality but also works of art, created for those who value craftsmanship, individuality, and timeless beauty.” 

It’s a statement Bentley could easily echo. And indeed, to mark the launch, the British marque unveiled a ‘Flying Spur Speed’ finished in Arctic White with a Piano Black veneer interior – a perfect mirror of Steinway’s monochrome duo. 
“Our collaboration with Steinway & Sons is a meeting of worlds, where craftsmanship connects music and motion. The Flying Spur Speed, paired with Steinway’s Ultra Black and Ultra White editions, represents a dialogue between two distinguished names, creating objects of rarity and enduring beauty,” says Wayne Bruce, Chief Communications and D&I Officer. 

Founded in 1853, Steinway & Sons remains the gold standard for concert pianists, its instruments painstakingly made by hand over the course of a year in just two factories located in Hamburg and New York. Bentley, meanwhile, has been crafting luxury cars in Crewe since 1919, evolving from W.O. Bentley’s original vision into a symbol of British engineering and design.

What makes this collaboration more than just a meeting of logos is the exchange of craft behind it. Steinway and Bentley artisans shared techniques in veneering, finishing and woodwork – a merging of two disciplines united by precision and touch. Both brands have built their legacies on that tension between handcraft and innovation: from Bentley’s meticulously engineered interiors to Steinway’s SPIRIO | r system, which can record and reproduce a live performance with astonishing fidelity.

Elegance shouldn’t be limited to concert halls or car showrooms and, together, the two brands prove that this is what happens when sound and speed share the same rhythm.

photography. courtesy of Steinway & Sons, Bentley Motors
words. Gennaro Costanzo