TILL WIEDECK "CRITICAL OBJECTS"

In august 2012 our dear friend Till Wiedeck (HelloMe) showed us at his DW Feierabendbierlecture some renders of a series of objects he was designing at that moment. About three month later they became real and shown at an exhibition. He calls them Critical Objects.

Sophie Jung writes in the preface of the catalogue: ”Till Wiedeck has created objects that are only allegedly functional. His Critical Objects are furniture made out of tubular steel, wood, concrete and luxurious Calacatta marble. With their clear, almost constructivist design, their static structure is exposed. But ultimately they are distorted, their function is deferred and contorted. Till Weideck’s objects undermine the iconography of design. What had firmly established itself in our visual understanding of a certain type of object is suddenly reduced to absurdity, reversed, warped, travestied, de- and overfuctionalised. (…) The redundancy of statics, playful use of color and material and aesthetic distortion of his Critical Objects render them sculptures. His peculiar objects clear the way for an aesthetic joy that is to be found in the ungrounded, in the artistic.”

Critical Objects is the result of an experiment without any predetermined goal. Through the re-interpretation of everyday objects and the rearrangement of their functional properties, the fundamental nature of the form is changed. Their function is reduced, amplified, or even annihilated and new perspectives of their altered potentials is achieved. The real challenge, however, lies with the recipient – the challenge of ones very own perception of things. Is this a chair or a table or is it a sculpture? What makes the object a chair and what makes it a sculpture? Till Wiedeck isn’t interested in giving answers, but wants to raise new questions.

OBJECT I | FOLDED STEEL SHEET, VARNISHED, POWDER-COATED | VARIOUS VERSIONS.

Till, why did you start designing objects?
I have a general interest in form and function, as well as in product design, furniture and the arts. I felt the need to have a break from my daily graphic design routine and wanted to explore design beyond my usual work but at the same time profit from my graphic designer mindset and point of view. I felt moving into a field that covers most of my interests could give me enough freedom to create something from scratch without getting lost. So I started to experiment with shapes and forms without a determined goal. It was simply not clear to me, what the outcome would be. The only thing that was set, was, that it would be three dimensional. So, this said, it was not meant to be furniture in the first place. First it was objects, then they became furniture in the process, and eventually moved away from furniture again, to become something in between furniture and sculpture. ”Critical Objects”, meaning objects that are in a critical state between two or more possible definitions of what they could be. The recipient has to decide on his/her’s own interpretation of the object.

OBJECT II | TUBULAR STEEL, PINE, TEXTILE CABLE, LIGHT BULB | 200 X 150 X 150 CM.

Which role does material and color play in your objects?
Materiality is of course of a high value when it comes to design in general. All the Critical Objects are way more concept driven though. The combination of material and color was chosen under certain aesthetic aspects to convey the feeling of a modern design item on first sight. Only the one that takes a closer look finds the actually distorted nature of the objects, their function is deferred and contorted.

OBJECT III | TUBULAR STEEL, STRETCHER FRAME, GRANITE, LATEX RUBBER, GRANITE-SPRAY | 80 X 80 X 72 CM.

What are your plans for the future? ;)
HelloMe will of course remain an art direction and graphic design focussed studio. However we are always interested to leave our field of expertise and explore different creative fields. HelloMe and TwoPoints.Net will collaborate on a line of conceptual furniture pieces in a similar mindset as the Critical Objects project. Also I am very interested in trying to explore ceramics a little more. The material aspects of ceramics and the different finishes always fascinated me. But this will probably find its way into a more graphic design related project. Let’s see what the future has to offer.

Till, Vielen Dank for your insightful answers.

Critical Objects will be on show in Berlin from the 22nd of November – 12th of December 2012 at by ( Marsano ), Charlottenstraße 75, 10117 Berlin. Vernissage 22nd November, 7-10pm. Find more info on facebook here.

LEFT: OBJECT VIII | POWDER-COATED TUBULAR STEEL, PINE LUBRICATED, PVC-FOIL, STONE | 150 X 72 X 50 CM. | RIGHT: OBJECT V | CONCRETE, HIGH-GRADE STEEL, CALACATTA MARBLE, PINE + FIBERBOARD LUBRICATED & VARNISHED, 55 X 62 X 55 CM.

OBJECT VI | POWDER-COATED TUBULAR STEEL, ALUMINIUM-JALOUSIE, PINE LUBRICATED, POTTED PLANT, VARIOUS HOOKS | 200 X 186 X 160 CM.

OBJECT VII | POWDER-COATED TUBULAR STEEL, PINE LUBRICATED, ADJUSTABLE ALIGNMENT OF ALL ELEMENTS | 180 X 105 X 95 CM.