Maxime Matias

Maxime Matias is a graphic designer who trained at École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. Founder of Studio Rimasùu and former resident at Ateliers de Paris, his pluri-disciplinary practice mixes typography, photography, printing techniques and olfactive art. He collaborates on a regular basis with architects, designers and artisans. In 2022 he took part in the Edo Tokyo Kirari project: a “conversation” between Paris-based designers and Tokyo-based artisans. Maxime Matias teaches at Condé Paris, École d’Architecture Paris-Est and ISIPCA. He also leads workshops, including at École de Création Visuelle Nantes, École des Arts Décoratifs Paris and University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI).

Representation is at the heart of Maxime Matias’s work as a graphic designer. The formal translation of an abstract concept by means of an image gave rise to language and signs, and beyond this the graphic elements of our daily and imagined lives. Having integrated this into his practice, Maxime Matias sets about exploring its limits by focusing on elements that resist representation, for example traces of passing time, reminiscences, memories and smells, using tools and media outside the conventional resources of graphic design. Japan offers a unique environment in which to study implementations of form, colour and material: all essential to this redefinition of the graphic design tool. Maxime Matias takes his research in two directions: on the one hand, symbolic nature and the wealth of Japanese graphic systems; on the other, kodo – the art of introspection – which he has practiced for a number of years.

Collaborations with artisans and the practice of kodo are central to the project, forming a heteroclite body of research through acquisitions of representation techniques, identification of unusual graphic forms, synaesthesial experiments, encounters and learning.

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