Un Banquet
catalogue
Galerie Kreo
2000
Lamineted Objects
Pierre Leguillon
To start with, a painter’s ruler, on the ground, on the edge. The metal strip, rolled on itself, is weighted by a two or three points by weights around the edge ; The elasticity of the shape result in an infinity of circles, more or less round. Martin Szekely choose the «positive» shapes among them, those that are not «pinched» ? those who have a certain fullness. Circles of chance, always imperfect, which don’t seem to be under pressure, but the tension of which supposes an exponential energy, increased tenfold.
The curve of these dishes is therefore the result of an operation ; the width of the initial ruler determines the depth. The glass paste, projected in fusion (and not full of air) comes to fill an opposite shape, a moulded matrix in the empty space created by the edge of the ruler. The (sometime intentional) gaps of the freehand style of Martin Szekely’s method, if they are still influenced by drawing, favour the pragmatism of a 3-D sketch. The result evokes the free style of the fifties when the ink-stain on paper seemed to take over the table tops and printed patterns. And more precisely, Serge Mouille lamps or Alvar Aalto vases, with their common will to have material, shape and colour coincide through the definition of the use. A more anonymous design also come to mind : the transparency of Tupperware (which arrived on the scene at the end of the forties) or of Japanese enamelled porcelain. The water green colour of the dishes also reveals the «accidental» qualities, like the variations in the thickness of jade. The glass is recycled, the uncertain colour of shards washed up on the shore and worn down by the sea and the pebbles. «Not that we object to all that shines in principle, but we have always preferred a deeper, shaded reflection to a superficial glacial sheen ; in other words the slightly altered shine in natural stones or artificial materials which irresistibly evokes the passage of time.» (Tanizaki Junichirô, Éloge de l’ombre)
The plywood bench-tables with no particular finish on which the dishes are placed, seem to have born from a similar erosion process. They combine the functionality of motorway lay-by furniture and qualities of the work of Donald Judd. We get the impression that just like a child’s toy, a sample twist would give them a totally different use.
Created using rudimentary principles and technologically manufactured, the dishes and tables experiment a new form of luxury which could be claimed by most of our everyday objects, those to which we are closest.
Martin Szekely seems to keep the final object at a distance and as such the design which constitutes the model, so as to make the initial concept undergo the test of the production line, as defined by use. Putting the emphasis on an empirical process where the dialogue, an oral form, supersedes the graphic form, however technical it might be. «In any case, intuition cannot be proven, it must be experimented. And it is experimented by multiplying or even modifying the condition of its use. .» (Gaston Bachelard, L’intuition de l’instant)
Perhaps we can then speak of the «style» of Martin Szekely’s objects, far from his signature but in the way Goethe meant it: «the result of the right method, as opposed to the right way.» These dishes and tables seem to have been swept ashore by an industrial process. Even produced in limited numbers, these shapes definitely open the doors to a laboratory where a methodology has been defined which can be transposed into mass production.