les curiosités d’un designer

In October at Les Arts Decoratifs commence exhibition of Maarten Baas, born in Arnsberg in Germany in 1978, Maarten Baas graduated from the prestigious Design Academy in Eindhoven in 2002. He is famous for his iconoclast and fanciful creations, ranging from the Smoke series of burnt furniture and the Clay Furniture collection, whose apparently unstable pieces seem to defy the rules of functional design, to the Sculpt series of mirror-distorted wardrobes, tables and chests of drawers and Real Time, a twelve-hour film of actors indicating the time. In his controversial experimental work, Maarten Baas merrily challenges design’s limits to reveal a strange, playful reality of optical effects and illusion.

For his first exhibition in a Parisian museum, he has imagined a universe inspired by 14th-century curiosity cabinets, a theatrical environment composed of a series of Surrealist interiors in which he mixes anonymous pieces and his own works. All his pieces are unique and seem to challenge the boundary of functional design, so, appeared very much unreal and unstable. In the process of manufacturing the idea Bass is particularly original; a miniature is first developed from the outlines he has in mind. In the next step he enlarges them into the real size, and satisfying his feeling to the finished product. In the workshop of Baas & den Herder, close to Eindhoven, where the designer allows to broadcast his production in an autonomous way.  Baas preserves a manufacture method “hand-crafted” while realizing each of its pieces to the hand. Most of his creations are therefore unique pieces, numbered and dated.

In 2005 Maarten collaborated with the design team of Ian Schrager, for the new Gramercy Park Hotel. Maarten Baas supplied Smoke furniture for each room and some Clay pieces and a Smoke billiard for the lobby. All pieces were hand made in studio Baas&den Herder. In August 2006 the Gramercy Park Hotel opened. In Milan, in April 2009 Maarten showed Real Time, a series of videos depicting a real time clock, with actors moving the hands of the clock as time passes by.

In 2009 Maarten was named Designer of the Year by Design Miami. During the design fair in Miami, he presented a new piece, commissioned by Design Miami, named The Shell.

Posted by : Amal Kiran Jana from Paris at 01:12PM