Objects - The Journal of Applied Arts

Coffee to go. Take-away pizza. Mon croissant sur le pouce, s`il vous plaìt. Finnish-Dutch designer Anna van der Lei presents us with Badkast, objects which are bathtubs, but also function as sauna, wardrobe, walk-in closet and spa all in one. They are sized conveniently and can practically be used on the go. From your balcony to the living room, from highrise buildings to historic houses, next to turnips and roses in your garden ? in Van der Lei?s watertight larch wood bathing box you can relax anywhere you?d like. The only thing you need is a water supply. However, you don?t necessarily have to bathe, you can simply sit in the dry wooden box, close the door and read a book. Or hide when your boyfriend's getting on your nerves...   www.annavanderlei.com

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It?s all up to you: Are you enemy or friend? Animal lover or gourmet? In her object series, Amélie Onzon, graduate of the Design Academy Eindhoven, leaves things for you to decide. Either you let your favourite goose splash about in the (blood) bath in happiness - or you hang it from the hook. Let the goose?s thick red blood drip slowly into the white ceramic tub until it?s completely drained and you can make foie gras from its liver ? greasy goose liver on your bread and butter. Something like this sure hasn?t been prepared before on such fine cherry wood...   www.amelieonzon.com

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Textile designer Elisa Strozyk, who was born in Berlin in 1982 and received her diploma in London, specializes in unusual surfaces. Her wall coverings are made of broken up baroque structures which adorn the walls of trendy Berlin stores. They appear like torn-down wall paper stemming from GDR days but at second glance they prove to be something else entirely. Elisa Strozyk wants to confuse the viewer at first. However, confusion quickly turns into surprise, just like in the new series "Wooden Textiles", in which Strozyk mends little pieces ofscrap wood to form geometrical patterns, stars and cubes. The 'wooden carpet' is a wavy, flowing rug made of wood, showing the otherwise rather massive material in the light of delicacy. Strozyk glues the wooden triangles onto cloth, so as to make the wood more mobile and to enable us to crumple it up in a corner somewhere or to drape it nicely or to make it look like parquet flooring ? which it isn't. Much like the wall paper, it isn't what it appears to be...   www.elisastrozyk.de

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At first glance, you may think more of children's bedrooms or vacuum cleaners -- but this impression is misleading. The ceramic entities, which were all cast in one piece, tell us about the questionable concept of standardized identity. Worlds collide in the robot-like objects: the fragile 18th century Asian painting is intertwined with crude futuristic mechanics; the new is framed by the old and vice versa. Tang was born in Ireland, his parents are from Trinidad, he's a citizen of Kanada - maybe these hybrids are also talking about Tang's history a little bit?    www.brendantang.com

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The adventures of Tintin and Snowy (Tintin et Milou), authored by Hergé, belong among the most successful series of comics that have ever been published. Their universe is a world all of its own and filled with different characters, stories and adventures. Tintin and Snowy have travelled to the moon, to Congo and to the Wild West. In Louvain-la-Neuve, a university town not far from Brussels, these worlds of images now come together in one place: at the Musée Hergé, which was opened up in June of last year and was conceptualized by Christian Porzamparc. Much like Hergé's drawings, the building of the museum is a cosmos in which a distinct language of color, form and figures comes to life. The world of thought of the Belgian graphic artist, who died in 1983, is connected with the outside world through panoramic windows. Inside, visitors go on a journey up and down winding staircases and across narrow bridges ? as if they were jumping from one frame to the next, they pass through the museum like an obstacle course. They disappear in halls which appear mysterious and huge from the outside and they discover a multitude of Hergé's original drawings, photos, documents and objects on two levels of the building with four exhibition rooms each. A visit at the Musée Hergé is like a walk though a three-dimensional Tintin comic book. The museum's right front façade is white and at the bottom it is signed by Hergé in curved letters - like the back of the comic books.     www.museeherge.com

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The moment when the lid is closed, closed for the last time, is a final and silent one. It's the point in time when life closes. The project "Mark the last veil" by Dutch designer Roose Kuipers makes this moment more bearable and makes us aware of the dignity of parting from the deceased person. Instead of the singular closing of a heavy coffin lid, in ?open coffin? six transparent layers of cloth are laid upon the other on the body. Until it is slowly removed from the gaze of the mourning... www.roosgeeftvorm.nl

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To lie in front of the fireplace on a polar bear rug is more alluring than crowding on little sheep skin rugs, even when the polar bear fur by fashion and product designer Sruli Recht, who was born in Israel and now lives in Reykjavik, is made from sheep skin. For his polar bear rug, which is three meters long, fifteen Icelandic sheep had to give their lives. And yet, the project was conceived as a statement against the fur industry - a statement of a different kind, naturally. Not just the sheep are finished off but also the phoniness of the fur industry. What is offered to customers as a high-priced luxury item is often a patchwork piece, made from fur rags and substandard goods. Not just one animal gave its life, many die for one fur item - the animals are treated as commodities and surplus material anyway. The bottom side of the polar bear rug exposes the trickery: a rag rug, sewn together like old butcher?s diagrams. The façade on the other hand fools us with luxury bling bling and teddy bear visuals... www.srulirecht.com

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