Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic A fledgling avocado plant stands on an aluminium console in the living room of \u0218erban Ionescu\u2019s Paris apartment, its roots twisting down into a glass carafe, a spindly stem stretching up to spread a handful of leaves. The artist sees it as a good omen.\u201cWe couldn\u2019t get one going at all in Brussels,\u201d says Ionescu, who moved from the Belgian capital with his wife, the cinematographer B\u00e9r\u00e9nice Eveno, and two daughters six months ago. \u201cThen we came here. It was from one of the first avocados that we ate. It\u2019s a nice metaphor \u2014 it feels like this is a place where we can grow.\u201dIonescu has become celebrated for his vibrant, playful \u2014 and functional \u2014 sculptures in ceramic, wood and powder-coated steel. Often, they have faces with wonky smiles, at once comic and creepy. He recently installed a 33ft public sculpture named \u201cRoom for a Shroom\u201d in Zonhoven, Belgium. Brand collaborations include those with Herm\u00e8s. Following exhibitions that have ping-ponged him across the globe \u2014 from Louise Alexander Gallery in Sardinia to Akiinoue in Tokyo and R & Company in New York \u2014 he is about to open a solo show at Marta, Los Angeles.\u00a0Such ricocheting in some ways echoes Ionescu\u2019s personal life, but recently, finding somewhere he and his family could put down roots has become increasingly important.\u00a0Born in Romania, Ionescu had moved to New York when he was 10, growing up, studying and forging his career there. But he and his family had spent the pandemic in Toronto, where Eveno was working on the television series The Handmaid\u2019s Tale, and when they made it back to New York, to their apartment in Red Hook, in Brooklyn, they found it was different to how they remembered it: \u201cIt felt like the energy of the city had shifted, and something had changed in me,\u201d he says. \u201cI never thought I would leave New York, but we had our second daughter and we were out-roomed in our apartment. From that, this wanderlust emerged.\u201dThey tried Brussels first, as Ionescu had an exhibition and commissions in the city. They stayed for 18 months, shuttling back and forth to New York, but Paris \u2014 where Eveno grew up \u2014 won out in the end. \u201cBrussels was a good way to land in Europe, we made great friends, but every time I\u2019d get off the train at [Paris\u2019s] Gare du Nord, I\u2019d feel like I was in a bustling city again,\u201d he says.It\u2019s for this reason that Ionescu describes Paris as \u201cNew York 2.0\u201d: it\u2019s a place that he finds inspiring and invigorating. New York had shaped him, personally and artistically. \u201cI think my quickness, the way I draw, the way I think, the way I speak, my energy, I think all of that really emerged out of the quickness of New York, the sloppiness, the chaos of it.\u201d As an architecture student at Pratt Institute, he would collaborate with the other students, experimenting with new ideas in their apartments. But after graduating he decided to focus on drawing, painting and sculpture.It wasn\u2019t until some years later, when he was creating furniture for his apartment in an abandoned building in Red Hook (alongside installing plumbing and electricity and a window with a view of the Statue of Liberty) that he found a way to reconcile his interests in art, architecture and design. \u201cAll of a sudden, I found that building something for the house, which didn\u2019t have the stakes of an exhibition at a gallery, allowed me to almost be complete,\u201d he says. \u201cIt felt much rougher, cruder, but it also came without judgment, it had no critical desires. And then once people saw it, it snowballed.\u201dThe home continues to be a place of experimentation for Ionescu, even if making the Paris apartment habitable was far more straightforward than it was in Red Hook. The apartment they found hidden amid a warren of historic buildings in the 11th arrondissement is a rental and needed little work. The ground and first floor of a well-maintained late 19th-century building \u2014 with its high ceilings, crown mouldings, marble fireplace, private garden and studio \u2014 is a refined backdrop for his and Eveno\u2019s collection of furniture and artwork (at least for now, plans for more extensive interventions are in the works).\u00a0They sent two palettes from New York that contained \u201cpredominately just the art collection\u201d \u2014 works by friends in New York including Clayton Schiff, Carlos Little, Eliot Greenwald and Omari Douglin that now line the stairs. The furniture, some shipped over from New York, some acquired in Europe, was quickly \u201ccollaged\u201d together, he says.Ionescu knocked up the kitchen a few days before the family moved in. In the dining room, which is open to the kitchen and the living room, there is a table base by Belgian architect and designer Theo De Meyer \u2014 who also made the ceiling lights \u2014 with a tabletop by Bel Albatros, a company in Brussels that recycles the city\u2019s plastic waste to create custom designs.\u00a0Ionescu\u2019s playful approach is evident everywhere: on the walls of the ground-floor toilet hang masks from Japan, Romania and Mexico, and a wooden chopping board found in a market in Provence that inspired a colourful chair in the hall \u2014 its\u00a0 wide, triangular handle reimagined as a face.The first floor is a little more restrained. A curtain covers one wall in Ionescu and Eveno\u2019s bedroom, hiding their closet. Ionescu points out how the bedrooms look out on to mature trees \u2014 \u201cthere\u2019s almost a sea of green in summer\u201d. The house faces an identical building, as if on a quiet provincial road and not tucked away in a hectic city.In contrast to Ionescu\u2019s vibrancy, Eveno\u2019s office is a deliberately minimal refuge: \u201cIt\u2019s funny, she wanted not to do colour.\u201dIonescu says he never expected to find somewhere like this in Paris, where his daughters can play with the neighbours\u2019 children in the tranquil garden where he has installed his work. \u201cOnce we did, it felt like the guards were down a bit,\u201d he says.Another important factor in the house \u2014 and even the move to Paris \u2014 was the studio. \u201cIt\u2019s the smallest studio I\u2019ve ever had,\u201d he says. \u201cI still have my studio in New York, which is maybe three or four times larger than this, but then I think it was Leonardo da Vinci who said small rooms discipline the mind.\u201d It is large enough, at least, for him to have made a \u201cpretty huge\u201d installation of red and green sculptures for the windows of Herm\u00e8s\u2019s store in Amsterdam.Having the studio so close to home was a natural step, given how closely intertwined his practice has become with the home. \u201cIn New York, I was always moving closer to the studio,\u201d he says. \u201cNow the house has become the studio, it\u2019s all this one blurred zone.\u201dIn the long term, he hopes the apartment will nurture more than just an avocado plant. \u201cI\u2019m hoping to build a community here,\u201d he says. \u201cI want the studio and my modest garden to turn into a space that\u2019s exciting for people to visit.\u201d\u201cThe Great Outdoors\u201d at Marta, Los Angeles, April 19-May 31; marta.laFind out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow @ft_houseandhome on Instagram<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic A fledgling avocado plant stands on an aluminium console in the living room of \u0218erban Ionescu\u2019s Paris apartment, its roots twisting down into a glass carafe, a spindly stem stretching up to spread a handful of leaves. The artist sees it as a good<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":279223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-279222","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279222"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279224,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279222\/revisions\/279224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}