by Zin Taylor
Notes related to Portals (SUN MILK) a project composed and presented for Maison Grégoire, a Henry Van de Velde designed house located in Uccle, Belgium, in the spring of 2014.
This project, Portals (SUN MILK), presents a series of objects displayed throughout the domestic space of Maison Grégoire. Each of these objects is hand-made with the intention of translating one situation into another, hence the designation of “portal”. The working theories of Henry Van de Velde will be compiled and analyzed to determine a series of working rules for the production of these objects. These rules, a list of “filters”, will serve as the initial material that is fed into my own lexicon of sculptural and conceptual language. Basically, Van de Velde will fuel the thoughts that will collide with my own index of influences, coming out the other side as propositions for the space - his rules, become my tools. The objects will not necessarily be “Van de Velde” in any specific way. Instead, a series of ideas will guide the development of thoughts into a series of forms. I’m concerned with the object as a portal, a form that transitions from one state to that of another: an idea, a thing, encouraging thoughts about something else, somewhere else, all the while staying put.
Thinking forms, objects of interaction: A to B to C.
A is the House
B is the Portal
C is the Thought
This temporary narrative situation, part C (the installation), results from the accumulation of part B. The given state, the interior of Maison Grégoire, part A (the house of Van de Velde), is a zone that’s home to a particular kind of psychology respondent to the individual.
Historically, the Art Nouveau period, and its eccentric modelling of life objects, of which Henry Van de Velde participated in, was followed up by the cleansing impulse of Modernism which focused on the removal of obstruction in order to provide voids of psychological space. Architecturally, these were to be areas of projection - where thoughts take the place of inhabiting decorative forms, as was commonplace with the pre-ceding period of Art Nouveau. Popularly known as ‘running room’, the idea, as coined by Adolf Loos, became a fundamental tool for thinking about the design of modernist space and objects - the user should be free to think, and the space occupied, along with the objects within such a space, should contribute to this. In a sense, a space for leisure was made - a presiding atmosphere contributing towards abstract, irregular, thought. My contribution is to make tools of transition for a space who’s ideological nature encourages growth within a generously conflicting space. As upon visiting and analyzing Maison Grégoire, there appears to be more that a little collision between ideological styles within the interior space. As a result, a series of object propositions will seek to grow out of this situation using my own suggestive reading of historical information as material.
Henry Van de Velde poses am interesting character within the progressive history from Art Nouveau to Modernism due to his dedicated and integral involvement with the Bauhaus School and then later with La Cambre in Brussels. It’s his buildings, the “Van de Velde Influence”, that encourages the observation of Brussels mid-century architecture as “Modernism with curves”, a particularly idiosyncratic development largely absent (at least from my limited experience) from the rest of the world - the humanizing curve establishing the building as something more personal and inhabitable to the individual. A compromise, or possibly a collaboration, between the ideas of the personal and the objective.
A space for projection, in other words, having the time to think, was afforded to a broadening middle class as the result of an international modernization of production, domesticity, and labor at around the mid-20th century mark following the post WWII sanctioned economic booms of Western Europe and North America. Coinciding with the emergence of the post WWII leisure class was the invention of the Teenager - a demographic who’s purpose, seemingly, was to consume. Interestingly, it was not just commodities that were ingested, but education and philosophy, and then later, alternative philosophies, education, and commodities. This predicament led towards an expanded field of sensitivity, of thinking, and of action.
The twenty years after this origin point (1955 - 75) saw the emergence of the counter cultural revolution and the civil rights movement. I’m not sure this is mere coincidence. Time affords people the opportunity to follow their interests, be it productive or counter productive, positive or negative, generative or destructive, horrible or fair. Alternatively, time has the potential to construct an opportunity where people can react with, and/or, against what is happening around and/or to them. Education, and abstract interest, fuels this. The pharmacological expansion occurring in the 1960’s lends credence to the progressive nature of the time that was to occupy the literal and figurative architectural space built by the preceding generation. These were ready-made spaces designed to facilitate the construction, and experience, of different narratives - the forms of the preceding generation are there to be filled with the thoughts of another.
Without over determining my output too much, and after a few visits to Maison Grégoire, I’ve thought of a few working points that I’ll address with forms. By making these ideas, these portals, to exist within the space, I’m interested in the translation of one thought into another, using the site of Maison Grégoire as a natural host for these forms. The domestic altering of Art Nouveau and the spacial projection of Modernism collaborates, at this moment, with a maker (that being me) who dates from the last quarter of the 20th century.
A loose index of the things I’ll be thinking about and making are: A playable board game for the coffee table in the living room, a curtain for the large picture window; a speaker sound system from which a specifically composed sound track will play from, or alternately, the record collection of the home owner; empty pots and dishes made of clay and plaster arranged in clusters throughout the space as sites to locate small objects and items, or left empty as voids to cast thoughts within; a model of a large tea pot, itself a device translating fluid from one type to another; fabric coverings for the book shelves; a lamp; and a few oddity sculptural forms encouraging moments of pause, projection, and thought; all of which actively contributing towards a series of projected abstract thoughts.
