6 September 23 November 2019

Jonathan Muecke

CTC1 & 2, CTO, FT, FS, WL, CTS

MANIERA, 27 – 28 Place de la Justice, Brussels (BE)

 
Statements on Muecke
 
Jonathan Muecke has been self-producing a series of useful objects during the last decade: at times acting as the manufacturer himself and, at times, working with technologically infused craft industries.
 
He operates a materially based practice utilizing metal, wood, and composites.
 
Muecke leaves these materials in their natural finish; when he uses paint — sometimes on metal — he uses mineral-based paints which have an authentic materiality of their own.
 
The limited materials he uses lend a visual and tectonic consistency across the work he produces.
 
Muecke’s work in composites has pioneered open molding: where uncured loose composite tubes are passed through industrially made composite parts before being cured into structural layups.
 
This represents a technological breakthrough in furniture manufacturing, allowing faster and more economical production of composite objects.
 
The geometric shapes of Muecke’s objects have a stabilizing effect on our perception of depth, perspective, and space.
 
His work, and the ideas therein, are carried across scales — from handheld to architectural objects.
 
He employs a vocabulary of forms, which are often repeated across objects.
 
By working beside the traditional furniture industry, he has created a contained body of work that is consistent with itself.
 
The construction of Muecke’s objects emphasize the whole rather than the parts.
 
Some of Muecke’s objects do not belong to known categories of furniture such as shelf or cabinet; rather, they carry principles such as containment or division. These spatial inventions function as balancing counterparts to his other objects in a shared space.
 
Muecke’s objects share a consistent attitude that is embodied by the above mentioned statements. This consistency allows the objects to operate together in a single environment.
 
Jonathan Olivares, Los Angeles, August 2019