Volume Gallery launches its sixteenth series with a collection of new works from Jonathan Muecke, titled Open Objects. Opening reception September 6th from 6-8PM, Chicago, IL.
Open Objects represents Jonathan Muecke’s second solo exhibition, comprised of six objects. The projects represent Muecke’s continuing comprehensive study of each object’s qualities, and dissection of their definition with the intention of engaging the user.
The objects in Vol.16 are both challenging and generous in their intention. Muecke’s projects are a continuation of common design typologies, allowing the user a comfortable starting point to think beyond their familiar notions of use and material, while the projects demand a certain quiet contemplation. Utilizing experimental materials and unique functionality, each piece removes our limitations of understanding and encourages the viewer to engage and interact, rather than react to the object.
Muecke creates a dialog with the user by ‘disturbing or collapsing the perimeters of an object such as geometry or depth of field or perspective. His objects demand to be figured out – the lack of directives as to how exactly to use Muecke’s designs invites intuitive forms of interaction’- thus creating an open relationship between user and object) (Field Essays, Sophie Krier, 2013).
Jonathan Muecke operates around the edge of design; he emphasizes each object’s conceptual purpose and universal meaning. Open Objects is his continual practice to un-define objects while defining something larger. These projects through their strong visual language not only redefine our understanding of functionality but our interaction with space and environment.
Jonathan Muecke’s interview with Dr. Brian Stonehocker.
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Continue OPEN OBJECTS across dominant typologies – table, light, bench, sofa, chair.
Effort at a perpetual shift – an oblique universality.
Between the center and the edge and the inside and the outside *
Brian: It’s usually the sign of a tough interview when a gallery chooses a psychiatrist to do it. I’m intrigued by the way you communicate both in writing and visually, and wondering how we can translate your practice in a way that makes sense.
Jonathan: Of course, you’re the interviewer but I thought we could begin and intentionally revisit some things over a number of days – to let some time pass between parts of our discussion. I think that’s helpful… at least in my case.
One of my favorite interviews comes from a series hosted by Harvard called the Charles Eliot Norton Lecture Series. It is not just one lecture, but instead a series of lectures given weeks apart. Charles Eames was asked to do this. The notes to those lectures are unpublished but I had a copy of them at one point.
What’s interesting about the notes and the way the lecture was delivered is that it really was incoherent: little bits of information that were unlike anything else Charles Eames would say to anyone: new ways of speaking, of communicating, almost like a poet. I just remember it being chaotic. I remember it being completely free. I was always fascinated by this transcript, and partially because it has not been published. I suspect it would create a problem for Charles Eames and his image now, because it’s almost like a walking contradiction to the clarity that everyone expects from him.
Brian: The only record I’ve seen of those lectures focused on the images shown. It described him showing hundreds of seemingly unrelated images (often several at a time), while playing clips of movies and music to illustrate concepts. Eames truly was a wild experimenter. But over time I think we’ve projected the clarity, simplicity, and perfection of his work onto our understanding of his personality and the design process. Perhaps that’s the best way to attempt to understand your design practice also.
Start with the objects.
Jonathan: I think that’s where I want people to start. I try to do as little as possible to intertwine myself with the work. For instance my website is intentionally the way it is. It is just images of the projects. There’s no news feed or bio or really anything more than just a single image of each project. Words are always trying to define things, and images and objects are always trying to work in the opposite way. Honestly, if it were up to me, I would say no photographs of the projects at all. You go and you see them in person.
Brian: Your work is very different in person than it appears in images. In photos the pieces superficially appear to be just simple, well-designed, minimalist objects, but you don’t get any sense of what it is actually like to interact with them.
Jonathan: I’ve never thought of them as being minimal. I’ve always thought of them being exactly opposite of that, of being about maximums. They can be as generous as possible, just reductive as possible. There’s a lot of effort involved to eliminate details, which is often one of the hardest things to do.
There are certain traits that you can’t take away from objects. Every object has to have a shape, material, color, proportion, texture, process, or idea even. Objects always will have these. I can’t just eliminate one and get away with it. For me it wasn’t about combining these things. It was more about collapsing them. I know I’ve been successful when these traits became equalized and you can’t distinguish between them. When the shape is the color, or the scale is the material.
Brian: I understand equalizing, but will have to think about collapsing. That is a foreign concept to me. Your manner of communicating reminds me of aspects of your practice. It’s precise and exacting, but also leaves considerable room for personal interpretation.
Perhaps it’s time we turned to the objects. One of the pieces that caught my attention was the Decentralized Light. I get the sense that this piece is more about the quality of light than the light itself.
*Jonathan: Exactly. What I was interested in was the idea of light unattached from an object, not lighting as an object, which has been a long tradition in interior lighting. I found the best way to accomplish this was to decentralize it. When it doesn’t have a center anymore, you can’t locate it as an object easily. So it became a perimeter, a perimeter to move around. It’s not about the object itself. It is intentionally very slim, and the gold anodizing reflects light in way that it somewhat disappears and then reappears. This project was really about finding the right scale, too big and too small at the same time, and too low and too high at the same time. Once that was resolved the project became successful. *
Brian: I’m reminded of the work of Danish architect Poul Henningsen. He didn’t set out to design iconic lighting, such as the Artichoke light. Instead the designs arose out of experimentation on how best to tame the harsh glare of the newly invented incandescent bulb. He recognized that this intense (centralized you could say) light was unnatural. Unlike others who were adapting existing designs for gas or candlelight, he generated these forms using scientific principles. By doing so he was able to produce something completely novel and timeless.
Henningsen was quoted in the 20’s as saying “We most certainly do not want new shapes unless they are determined by new needs.” I was in Milan earlier this year and saw thousands of new shapes, but must admit I wondered about the need.
Jonathan: We have an accumulated knowledge of design and objects. New design is often based on famous shapes and proportions, or adapted from existing design. I don’t feel anything new comes from that equation. My interest is in finding the limits of objects. You’ve found the limit of an object when it becomes an Open Object.
Brian: What do you mean by Open Object?
*Jonathan: At Cranbrook, my classmates would always ask me what I was working on. In a way I was asking for an object you could see for the first time repeatedly. At the time the term Open Object didn’t exist. I was really describing the traits of an object. What remains after you’ve seen an object for the first time. I was tired of looking at something and being able to say to myself, “This is made out of this material, this does this specific function and so on”. There should be a way to let the unknown remain in the object. You recognize this in objects, or in moments like standing on the edge of the shore and looking into the sea. It’s about not knowing what you are looking at. It’s that, and also knowing what you are looking at. You are knowledgeable and ignorant at the same time. *
Take the Mezzanine. That object transcends. It is evident even in a photograph that it is constantly changing. It’s an oval, which is a regular enough shape, but there are five legs. They’re regularly spaced, but they’re not on any type of axis. The edges are shifting five times. The shape of the edges changes five times, but that shift doesn’t occur in the same shift as the leg. These shifts aren’t stacked. It has an effect on that object that in my estimation makes it universal.
Brian: So in effect you are engineering qualities into the object that makes one want to move around it, experience it in different ways, and have an ongoing relationship with it; the opposite of planned obsolescence.
As a collector I can relate to that. There are some pieces I’ve acquired only after years of searching, but once they are in my home they fade into the background. I stop noticing them. And there are others that I never tire of. I hadn’t understood the term Open Object, but I intuitively know what it is like to live with one.
You refer to them as projects or experiments instead of objects. They are different. Perhaps that is why two pieces from your first show are already in major museum collections.
*Jonathan: The first show was just about making an Open Object. This time around, I had to consider the more challenging ones. It is quite easy to say “this is a Mass” and develop an Open Object for a typology that doesn’t exist. In this show I wanted to find the Open Object in a dominant typology. I’ve been calling that universal without knowing why. I feel they travel forwards and backwards to a greater extent.
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Brian: You refer to continuing Open Objects across dominant typologies – table, light, bench etc, but there is one piece – the Stabilizer – that I don’t see as fitting into any of these known categories.
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Jonathan: I’m not sure. I think the stabilizer is strangely still a dominant typology. Just as we all know the experience of natural light, we all know the experience of being stabilized by the horizon. I think somehow that it translates easily. *
Brian: So it’s an artificial horizon that gives you a sense of being stabilized?
Jonathan: It’s an interior horizon. It’s a real horizon. I don’t think it’s artificial. It works exactly like the horizon there. That happens in the project through the way that the shape is developed. The shape was developed in a way that it’s shifting constantly and you can’t exactly align yourself to it. Of course, it has a dominant horizontal shape, but you can be around it at all angles and heights and not really know your position to the object if that makes any sense. It’s somehow free from you. You feel the distance.
The stabilizer, I’ve always known about this project. In a way, I’ve been confident about this project for a long time. Seeing it for real just affirmed my suspicion. I think it fits into a strong typology just as easily as the bench does. Perhaps you can’t recognize it in an image but the moment you step into proximity to it you know exactly what it is. You may second-guess yourself because there’s been nothing like it in the interior before, but I think you understand it immediately. I think anyone would understand it. It’s that successful. It’s a bit strange.
Brian: I agree it sounds strange, but when you pause to think, we are familiar with, and already integrate many things in our lives to stabilize us: yoga, meditation, objects of devotion, or even pharmaceuticals.
Jonathan: Exactly. That’s right, that’s right. This project is perhaps more. Those are all connected to things beyond just stabilizing. Whether it’s religion or medicine those are all connected to something else. I think this project is much more direct than any of the examples that you brought up. This is isolated and I think that’s why it works so well. It’s like saying a table is a table or a chair is a chair. Somehow the stabilizer is stabilizing. It’s that clear.
Brian: It IS that clear. And it isn’t. I find everything we’ve discussed completely logical, yet certain aspects are strange. Strange in the true sense of something not yet encountered, or still unknown. I’m looking to this being an open interview.
Epilogue: This interview represents the cogent points of multiple discussions between Jonathan and I throughout August 2013. Jonathan approaches his practice with a sincerity, internal consistency, and rigor that leads to conversations both incredibly illuminating and occasionally obtuse. He is always willing to discuss his practice, but reticent to be prescriptive in how to understand and interact with the objects; often saying, “You’ll find your own way.” Left with unanswered questions, I realized the best course of action was to follow Jonathan’s advice and experience the objects myself.
I flew to Chicago and found the pieces in storage awaiting the upcoming exhibition. Even in the limited viewing area I could appreciate the aesthetics of the pieces, and was carrying on my usual practice of frantically snapping pictures when it was insisted I sit down in front of Stabilizer. What I experienced at that moment is hard to explain; it was both familiar and strange. Jonathan was right – it was that clear. I felt like I was in a great expanse of nature in the middle of a 300 sq. ft. room. For me this was the most functional piece in the exhibition. Perhaps this was what Jonathan meant by his statement “Between the center and the edge and the inside and outside.” Perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps you won’t experience anything close to this. It doesn’t matter. You’ll find your own way.
Dr. Brian Stonehocker is a design collector, and member of the Decorative Arts Acquisition Committee at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts/Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal. He also happens to be a psychiatrist.
