Arik Levy: “Believe in your dreams”

Famous for his sculptures, installations, limited editions and art projects, Arik Levy was born in Israel, and moved to Europe in 1986 before a spell in Japan and then setting up home in Paris, where he currently works. With an unconventional background (surfing played a large part in his life in his birth country), Arik Levy is a multidisciplinary artist whose work ranges from art to photography, and installations to video production. One could undoubtedly coin a new phrase for Levy – form follows emotions – without unduly slighting his design practice. An all-round creative, a sensitive artist and essential and astute industrial designer, Levy explores nature and the human soul in all his projects. Thus function and poetics share the space in his objects: in just a few lines, Levy responds to a concrete need while simultaneously delighting the eye. For him, devoting himself to design means improving the quotidian. He describes his approach to objects as “emotional ergonomics” or “I care design”: his projects have to tend to the body and the spirit of man. Perceptive and brilliant, he manages to condense his artistic and philosophical credo into this chat.