IKEA? (EventArchitectuur, 2009)

The way in which an exhibition is organised is of vital importance for Utrecht Manifest. Not only the ‘What’ but especially the ‘How’ takes a central role if an exhibition seeks to encourage the viewer to consider also the invisible qualities of an object, such as thinking about the societal and social importance of it.

EventArchitectuur belongs to the exhibition organisers who always create more than a neutral supporter for an exhibition and make the exhibition model part of the purpose of the show. A nice example of this is given in the Unresolved Matter exhibition in the Centraal Museum, and will be further explained at the entrance of the exhibition.

Unforeseen Magic shows a small part of NL=Nieuwe Luxe [New Luxury], which is another exhibition organised by them and which shows appropriately how the exhibition itself can be a contribution to a more critical research. In this case, the curator wanted to encourage the discussion about the changing role of the designer. Prompted by contemplations about mobility and flexibility, this exhibition is based on a simple IKEA table. However, the choice has a background that reaches further than pragmatics only; this simple wooden table is the direct result of the ancient longing for a cheap and democratic product, and can be seen as the end result of an industrial process brought to perfection.

In other words, this table is the perfect result of the ideology of modernism, and by its neutral presence it is in line with the ambitions of architects like Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier. In the past century, these architects propagated a similar neutral aesthetic in an effort to build from there a meaningful relation with the user. The question is whether this modernistic ambition was the background that IKEA had in mind for the aesthetics of this table. It appears that this table was for IKEA rather the starting point for all kinds of new interpretations by the users. By painting or stencilling the table, this ‘democratic product’ will symbolise another new ideology: the consumer as the designer.

By using this table, which was so connected with all these different meanings, EventArchitectuur links the ambitions of the NL=Nieuwe Luxe Exhibition with the present reality of the market. A reality in which at the most the designer manages to secure a place as a star vis-à-vis the mass production of the industry, and in which the consumer as the designer supplanted the designer as the specialist or as the craftsman.

But EventArchitectuur goes the extra mile: this IKEA table is not only used, the table is also transformed, elongated, stacked, sawed up, covered, turned over, to serve as a specific basis for each project. This makes generic qualities become specific, and in the end standard becomes unique. This process of appropriation is culminated in the opening scène of the exhibition, which is reconstructed here.

The tables are used here in such a way that they are no longer a simple basis for an exhibition but they have become a more autonomous installation. Not only is the cheap table deformed but it is also covered with mirrors more expensive than the table itself, and they seem to refer to the real issue of the exhibition: NL=New Luxury. Only, this complex stacking is empty, stripped from every project, and seems by its emptiness to be a metaphor of the demand for a new luxury and the position that the designer can still assume vis-à-vis the industry and the consumer. Is this a choice for a more autonomous position and consequently an escape from the current democratization of designing? Do they see this democratization of designing as the last form of populism as the umpteenth ideology of the market? Or does EventArchitectuur attempt to fuse the designing with equally democratic forms of appropriation as autonomous forms of artistry in an attempt to maximize the critical potential of the designer?