“Muselets: Random Walks of Happiness” conveys a deeply felt and internalized, personally experienced, minimalistic style of expression. It is the result of years of observation and is a marriage between the forces of nature and the human emotion of happiness. The project manifests itself in a unique and a very elegant object, an undeniable symbol of happiness – le muselet, the metal wire on top of a champagne cork.

The traditional occasions when a champagne is popped are some of the most precious and memorable moments in life. When the muselet is released from the bottle, people celebrate a big milestone and make wishes for good health, happiness, love, and success. The noble shape of the muselets has been developed and perfected for centuries but remarkably their design is virtually unchanged in the past 100 years. On top of their organic form, aesthetics, topology, and geometry, muselets are charged with the enchanting memories of the happy moments when they were opened. The main inspiration behind this project is to follow the metamorphoses of the muselets after happiness was released and finding a plethora of new artistic meanings and new permutations of the perfection of these found objects. Their character, their noble initial shape, and the sequence of random transformations they experience out in nature make these objects intriguing and adorable.

Even though all muselets start with the same perfect and standardized shape, once they have served their intended purpose, they often end up in a random location where they take a random walk – they are subjected to various transformations by the outside environment and their shape evolves. They start resembling small statues, real and abstract portraits of people, faces, dancers, ballerinas, animals, vehicles, mythical and magical creatures, geometric transformations, hieroglyphs, symbols, codes, calligraphies, knots, figurines.

The collection of these found objects of art amounts to around 20,000 and has been gathered carefully over the course of the last six years from all over the world by the artist’s whole family. All of them have been found in the wild – in the park, on the street, on the steps of famous sites. Each one has been released to mark a happy moment and tells its narrative or sometimes many intertwined narratives spanning over years, even decades. When presented in a composition or installation with minimal intervention, the muselets are infinitely diverse in whispering their unique random walks of happiness. They impact the audience profoundly and capture its attention for hours – the viewers can relate to these objects of art and try to decode their resemblances and unique narratives, as well as remember their own special moments of happiness. It is an act of meditation and recharging.