Maarten Baas talks.

The Powerhouse Museum
Sydney 17-11-09



Smoke Series(03)
Baas' graduation piece, Design Academy Eindhoven 1996

A very interesting talk on the disparity of our acceptance of beauty in manufacture (mostly perfectly symmetrical, even and polished) and beauty in nature (uneven, wild and often is complete disarray. Always changing).

Commented on trying to create work that requires no explanation, whose concept is inherent but maybe not apparent and certainly not laboured to its audience.

A delightful walk through Baas's work, Smoke (03), Treasure (05), Clay (06), Sculpt (07), Tha Chankley Bore (08), The Shanghai Riddle (08), Standard Unique (09), Real Time (09) and his most recent commission by New York collector Lindemann.

My highlight was most definitely his response to the question:
Are you an artist or a designer?

An honest and unabrasive:
'I don't give a shit about the answer of this question.
You can stretch anything anywhere you want.
I don't see the reason why I would ask it.
I make things.
You can talk about it or you can not talk about it and spend the time to play some football or something.'

Bloody great.


Clay (06)

The Shanghai Riddle, 2008

Transformation

Maarten BAAS

Contrasts Gallery

Shanghai

15-08-08 to 04-09-08

Baas:

'Wood is not possible to melt. But yet it seems to melt. What is that? You don't actually know what it happening, but you just accept that it is happening.'

Drawing his inspiration from the city of Shanghai, Baas says: 'They do things you just couldn't find in Holland. There are so many contrasts over there. You don't know if something is new or old or fake or real or traditional or modern. This makes a kind of mixture which you can't understand, you just accept it.'

Baas has characterised Shanghai as 'a city full of contradictions, old/new, high tech/low tech, tradition/revolution, fake/real, cheap/expensive, original/copy. Together all these contradictions seem to form a big and interesting paradox, the complexity of which you can't exactly define. What you can feel is the atmosphere, the energy coming from it, a kind of chemical reaction to what's happening'.

Source: IconEye & Wallpaper* Online