Zoom (2004) - Dilmos Milano

by Studio Job

A collection of furniture casted out aluminium and new bronze editions by Studio Job.

"The work of Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel falls outside of the standard patterns, making it a perfect match with the distinguishing characteristics and history of Dilmos.

Their design concepts enter homes not only to be looked at, but also to interact with the lives and desires ot the inhabitants.
We have always held their creative efforts in especially high esteem, on account of the poetry they bring to their creations, the materials they use and the overall quality and attention of their work.
This is why we have decided to present their designs for
the second straight year."

Dilmos, 2004, Milan

"Gigant silhouettes of insects crawl in an expressive pattern over the windows and walls of the space. they surround an installation of freakish silver objects alternated with big golden archetypes:
crumbles, apples and diamonds... it seems as if you see the scene through a magnifyng glass."

Studio Job, 2004, Antwerp

THE ETERNAL BEAUTY

Actually, Studio Job's new season opened already earlier this year during the prêt-a-porter Paris Fashion Week with their contribution to two designer collections. This contribution consisted out of patterns for fabrics and accessoires, both originated from one basic pattern:
one idea but each uniquely applied and which was an upbeat for their own presentations in Milan.
Studio Job is well-known for a refined play of visual clues and in their work elements have been embedded which sometimes seemed
to have been restricted to visual arts. Their work balances
between design and autonomous art. For years form dictated the function, but Job seemed to move in a complete different direction so that he surprised the onlooker with fairy-tale and decorative elements. By doing this, Job created a self-willed and typical oeuvre to which anually a new chapter is being added.

This years 'red line' is the insects pattern, that already seemed to dominate the Parisian catwalk, and of which further developments will be at these two Milanese exhibitions. This new insects pattern is the representation of an underlying fascination of Smeets / Tynagel for the issue that the unique object, which implies so little in the design field, versus the omnipraised unicity in the art world where it is aclaimed as the summun.
The difference between the unique object or the industrial produced object is only relative according to Job; both are dependant
from the idea. Gallery Dilmos bows on an illustrious history on their own territory of design and shows a part of Job's story this year.

ZOOM

"In Dilmos there is quite of a buzz. Zoom is the name of the collection which is being presented there and the title also refers to various associations that summon the word like an onomatopoeia. From small to large, from micro to macro zooming from present to past, in the face of eternity, everything is merely a representation of the same.

It seems to apply to the collection of objects which are presented
at this gallery.

Also here, insects seem to have taken control over the space, their zooming on the background is almost audible. However the leading part is granted to a set of three chairs, set up on top of mirror socles. For who knows Job, this step is quite remarkable to say at the least. What should the public expect from a designer who once said himself that at the beginning of the industrial era everybody needed a chair,
but know that need seems to be adequately full-filled and therefore
the necessity to make another new chair declined.

When taking a closer look the chairs seem to refer like a sort of archetypes from the design history of three different style periods: Louis XVI, a kind of modernistic minimalism and Pop: it is one big style cocktail. All three chairs are gorgeous, like goddesses they are standing flaunting with each their own assets, waiting on their
pedestals erected with mirrors. Mirror, mirror on the wall ... After all, each period thinks that its the surpassing step of the previous period? The bronze apple is like a trophy that lies waiting for judgement.
Or is it the diamond that ultimately are a 'girl's best friend'?

Does this mean that Job only shows jests? Is he trying to say that constant renewal merely is an illusion? And that the struggle for the ideal shape, after the primary need for sitting has been full filled with
the first chair, is nothing more than a deception like old wine in new bottles? And is it perhaps only appearances and vanity, of which Job wants to persuade his public? Because like the diamond,
which consists out of eons long pressed carbon, seems to teach
each us, to dust, no to carbon they and also we will return?

Perhaps not, because except of the chairs, which all have been manufactured from an atypical material, namely polished aluminium castings, it is also something different which emphasizes the relationship between the different chairs.
All three chairs are stylistic recognizable by means of their rocky crystal structure. It is unclear whether this structure is the symbolic building element from which they are made out of, so that is it seems as if Job
is telling that it is not so much the eternal return of the same,
but that there also is real comforting beauty in every era, in every new design and that every shape is a manifest of that single idea, so that
the unique, the special, the precious move independently from the degree it presents itself. Or is it by any chance true that the furniture
is crumbling away, eaten away by invisible but definite ravages of time, or perhaps it even are the insects, gradually deafingly zooming, in their unstoppable gluttony and are gnawing the whole lot?