Aluminium Sculpture One

Doesburg House, Meudon France 2005

Sico Carlier, artist and editor of Currency magazine, is currently living in the house built by Theo van Doesburg in Meudon near Paris. Many artists and architects preceded him for a period of 6 or 12 months. His aim is to bring more activity to the house itself instead of just moving one’s practice from one city to another.
The first thing Mr Carlier noticed was all the Piet Hein Eek furniture that cluttered the modernist space. Even though an estimated 20.000 euro was spent in ‘redecorating’ the house with Mr Eek’s aluminium designs he immediately moved everything to the room behind the yellow garage door.

The big white concrete cube in front of the house, originally built for a sculpture by Jean Arp, was kept as an empty pedestal. It has intriguing similarities to Warhol’s ‘Invisible Sculpture’ from 1974.

Bas van Beek was invited to work on an intervention there. ‘For perversely obvious reasons’, Van Beek recycled the stored aluminium Dutch Design furniture into a temporary sculpture. ‘It’s actually the worst thing one can do with product designs, putting it on a white pedestal, surrounded by the aura of high art.’

The broken bench that was used in the sculpture gives it a sense of reality. The use of everyday furniture reveals a deterioration that can give it another quality or even better expose its failure. Stripping the objects from their function and objectifying design without being too funny about it becomes a goal within itself.