On Décor
Weekend at Charlie's (catalogue)
On Décor
Laila Melchior & Lenny Vervaeke
Mainly associated with design and the applied arts, concepts such as function and adornment are often alien to the visual arts' debate. Charles Vandenhove has contributed to a dialogue between fine and applied arts both through his practice as an architect and his collection. Connecting architecture to artistic intervention, he highlighted both spheres as simultaneously particular and intersecting forms of presences in relation to space.
Sol Lewitt's Untitled (1980 - 85) pieces, for instance, are both autonomous works and mockups of the enameled plaques at the Academic Hospital Sart-Tilman in Liège. Beyond their decorative role and flat aspect, they show voluminous projections emerging through form and color in this piece as trompe l'oeil. As if construction sketches, the forms evoke architecture by themselves.
Jo Delahaut's Bâton Series might contrast to Lewitt's work: a set of flat colors applied to a wooden stick generating both a painting and a decorative object.
Composed of monochrome paintings in which color overruns the surface's edges, Amedée Cortier's Rouge-Jaune Diptych (1973) unveils color as an object in relation to a wall, the artist's background as a house painter is crucial.
In turn, Athos Bulcão's extensive tile production is indissociable from the practice of architect Oscar Niemeyer. Presented here through the tiles designed for the Rio Branco Institute (1998), Bulcão's work promotes a particular critique of Brazilian colonial heritage and architecture in simultaneous dialogue with the country's modernism.
Finally, Didier Vermeiren's Sculpture de Socle (1980) presents a pedestal on top of another as the sculpture itself. Informed by minimalist and conceptual influences, Vermeiren assesses the history of art through a critique, the lack of figurative elements highlighting the structures separating common spaces from what is presented as art.
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