Working with things.

The wealth and simplicity of research into material culture.

21 February 2005-2012

Working with things.

The wealth and simplicity of research into material culture.

Remembering him is an occasion to rediscover an extraordinary manner of facing contemporary life.

Why is it important to remember MVS?  Because whether we speak of the formation of the family (parents, relatives and children all anomalous frequenters of the art world), or we speak of the combination of finding himself in Ghent at the beginning of the 90s (Koolhaas, de Geyter,  Margiela, etc), these factors produced a view of the material world that was extraordinarily fecund. Even though he is remembered as a Minimalist, a label he always rejected, Maarten was always fascinated by the vitality of things, with a particular passion for the banal and everything that crosses our activities on a daily basis, in a totally amoral manner, unpolluted by aesthetic or historical prejudices. It is in his way of exploring the world with avid curiosity that Maarten establishes his value, in his ability to metabolise the things he encountered and analyse them on the sensorial and functional level, until they were reduced to a level of absolute simplicity, almost naive. The picture frames of his works are filled with photos (for which he had a true passion) where not so much the forms but the need to fix into the memory sensorial experiences is recorded, being able to condense and reduce these into objects of perfect precision. Perhaps more than in the design however, it is in the definition of living space that Van Severen shows his great capacity to create wealth. One famous example is the renovation of a villa from the beginning of the century near Ghent for the Boxy twins, famous chefs. The renovation was concentrated solely on the kitchen, an area always dedicated to and the centre of social activity.

 

 

 

 

The naturalness with which the intervention was arranged is impressive. The cut of the new openings might represent a manual for renovation solutions, given that the pagination is so elegant. Notwithstanding this quality, it is only from the inside, from the table, that the project-device is explained. Everything as dialogue with the existing: extraordinary the peep-hole in blue glass that dialogues with the fireplace in blue majolica of the sitting-room, just like the heat one perceives on the skin generated by the large kitchen-fireplace in painted cement, or the wooded scent of leaves that are consumed before the large sliding external window.