16/11/2011
Face Value
Tent, Rotterdam
The exhibition focuses on the re-evaluation of the question of autonomy in the design process. What role does independent research play - non-commissioned, with no thought of possible applications and without significance - in the development of the designer's work? Bertjan Pot, 75B, Sophie Krier and Marga Weimans present their autonomous research as a structural component of their design practice. During the opening presentation of 'Shared Space #4', a spatial intervention conceived by Aad Krol for the communal area.
In the exhibition Face Value, four established designers abandon their commercial bestsellers, winning
house style designs or attractive logos and actually show the work in which they seek, hesitate or fail.
What is the value of autonomy, authenticity and originality – so characteristic for the work of a visual
artist – in the practice of product designer Bertjan Pot, graphic designers 75B, designer Sophie Krier and
fashion designer Marga Weimans?
The spectre of market-oriented thinking as a solution for everything is currently at large in the Dutch
cabinet policy. The world is now interpreted solely in economic terms: if you don’t make money, you’re
finished. For the arts in the Netherlands it has become clear that they must force themselves into the
straitjacket of supply and demand, of a product for which there must be a market. If subsidies are already
being provided, these are now called investments. As far as the government is concerned, the product
designers and the creative industry are the saviours of the cultural world, because they know how to deal
with supply and demand. Dutch Design is the standard bearer for the Dutch arts and the designer is the
spin-doctor for every product to be sold. Hal Foster already anticipated this in his well-known Design and
Crime (2002).
Face Value focuses on the re-evaluation of the question of autonomy in the design process. What
role does independent research play – non-commissioned, with no thought of possible applications and
without significance – in the development of the designer’s work? In the exhibition, four prominent
Rotterdam-based designers present their autonomous research as a structural component of their design
practice. They show their indebtedness to the free arts and partly undermine the significance of their own
commissioned practice. Without the words that belong to the discourse around design: utilizable,
solution-oriented, durable, ecological social design. Free from supply and demand, they call attention to
the fragile and difficult process of research, in a place outside the commercial arena, somewhere between
the private and public moment, where it doesn’t just revolve around (mass) reproducible designs, but also
around individual wishes and desires.
This autumn, the lamp Heracleum by Bertjan Pot was nominated for Best Consumer Product at the Dutch
Design Awards (Eindhoven). His chair Empty Seat 2010 is nominated for the Thonet Mart Stam Award
2011 and he is participating in the design exhibition Nieuwe Energie in Museum Boijmans van Beuningen.
Pot is one of today’s most important Dutch Designers. As early as 1999, he created a true design classic:
the Random Light (1999-2002), made of glass fibre and resin, which now hangs all over the world. Pot
designs for big clients, such as Moooi and Arco, but also initiates his own designs. The latter are
immediately visible when you visit his studio. The space resembles a typical artist’s studio. It is full of
fabrics, objects, materials and plants waiting to be assembled into a previously unimaginable utensil.
Thus, the masks he has been making for quite some time now came about during the coffee breaks
between designing. For Bertjan Pot the free and the applied research are intertwined, or, as he puts it: ‘In
design it’s often about streamlining and simplification. I would rather create noise’.
Before the design style of 75B was definitively recognized as typifying modern Dutch graphic design, the
bureau even exhibited work in Galerie Fons Welters (2001). The International Film Festival Rotterdam, the
Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, the Ro Theater, the Fonds BKVB – all have a house style in the distinctive
simple, clear, humorous 75B style. Rens Muis and Pieter Vos are co-directors of the collective, which was
established in 1997. These days they rarely show their autonomous work in the Netherlands. In their free
work, unlike their commissioned designs, their personal style virtually leaps off the paper, and thus they
also reveal something about how they personally relate to the ideas they collect. They operate between
sketching and writing. Their works could be called notes, a result of the moment at which they think
about the impact of a form, about the effects of colour, about their own social position and responsibility
on the borderline between commercial and non-commercial activity.
Sophie Krier has lived and worked in Rotterdam since she graduated cum laude from the Design Academy
Eindhoven in 1999. In her design practice Sophie Krier reflects on the field of design and navigates
between self-initiated projects and commissioned works. Accordingly, her sphere of work extends to the
peripheries of the design field. Thus, she was head of the designLAB department at the Gerrit Rietveld
Academie in Amsterdam and is regularly involved in (travelling) educational projects. In her ongoing
project Field Essays she examines the motives and strategies of the design processes used by third parties
and reports on these qualities in publications and during public activities. Following on from this, she
writes columns and essays, assembles exhibitions, edits books and curates symposia.
In 2005, designer Marga Weimans became the first Dutch national to graduate from the fashion
department of the prestigious Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. She presented her collections Debut
and Wonderland off schedule at two Haute Couture weeks in Paris. The Groninger Museum collects her
work and displayed her Wonderland Collection in 2011. The Green Landscape Dress was the centrepiece
of that collection. Weimans’ fashion often contains references to architecture, or results in architectural
experiments. In recent years her designs have developed into baroque forms, into an entire world, a
world of fantasy, as a dialogue with and escape from the cold light of reality.
Image: Bertjan Pot, A Room with a View, 2011 (foto: Studio Bertjan Pot)
Thursday 08.12.2011, 20.00h - Tupajumi Foundation presents: art exchange fair FITAX750
In January 2011 the first art exchange fair by Tupajumi took place in Kunst&Complex in Rotterdam, at
which 50 artists and collectors swapped each others’ works. By now, FITAX fairs are taking place in Berlin,
Norway, Sweden and Chicago.
Thursday 17.11.2011, 20.00h - Opening Face Value
With live music by TIKA. TIKA is a mix of El Pino & the Volunteers and Moss, consisting of the front men
from both bands. Their debut album, For Better Or Worse, was released in September
Thursday 17.11.2011, 20.00h - Opening Shared Space #4, curated by Aad Krol
Witte de With and TENT present Shared Space #4, a spatial intervention conceived by Aad Krol (Galerie
VIVID) for the communal area of both institutions. For this project, Krol has composed an interior with
work by the young designers Jack Brandsma, Thomas Eurlings, Jelle Feringa and Dennis Parren.
Press contact
Carolien van Hooijdonk or +31 (0)10 4135498 com.tent@cbk.rotterdam.nl
Tent
Witte de Withstraat 50 - 3012 BR Rotterdam
opening hours: thue - sun, 11 - 18.00 hrs