SPACE A
FOIL
ANDRE TJABERINGS
Via the constructs of surreal visionary architecture, Andre Tjaberings investigates 3-D geometry, spatial intrigues, systems and cities. He uses these as metaphorical vehicles to explore an inherent struggle between structure and anti-structure, the building up and the falling down, the fallibility
of systems.
In the 1960’s the Dutch architect Constant conceived a project called New Babylon, a city where it seems it would be continually reshaped by its populace. It was an unfixed architectural project, dissolving, fluid and in a state of flux. More importantly, he thought buildings were “props in publicity campaigns, whether for a corporation, city, museum, university, sports team or legal office.” He also wrote: “Buildings are but glamorous packages that facilitate the illusion of freedom while maintaining strict social control. Even cities become commodities, products to be marketed like any other.”
Rick Poynor, No More Rules – Graphic Design and Post Modernism, London: Laurence King Publishing, 2003
Through employment as a graphic designer – constructing adverts and products that help to underpin marketing campaigns – comes an interest in advertising rhetoric and the way it informs and inserts itself into our lives, our homes, our cities. British author Rick Poynor writes in his book No More Rules – Graphic Design and Post Modernism, “graphic designers are deeply implicated in a consumer culture that makes ever more ingenious use of design as a beacon of identity and a tool of seduction.”
Mark Wigley, ‘Constant Appeal’ Architecture, v89 no.8, August 2000, p55
From these two threads of artistic practice and commercial invocation this project scopes out the loading of architectural structures with branding and the language of advertising, and the relationships between graphic designer, architect, artist and consumer.
