INFO

Type
Concept

Year
2019

Design
Jasper Goris

Images
Jasper Goris

A coal story is an imaginary studio space that I designed for an artist of my choice, namely Rinus Van de Velde. This contemporary artist is mainly known for his large charcoal and pastel drawings. Van de Velde describes his work as a kind of mythological biography that contains drawings and accompanying narrative texts. For his drawings the artist usually starts from a photograph that captures staged or artificially constructed scenes, made out of cardboard, in which he or his assisting friends figure.

My design is inspired by Van de Velde’s artistic views and his ‘tableau photographs’, in which he stages his images -as a collage- by carefully (re) assembling cardboard elements and arranging the composition into a visually powerful event, situation or emotion. Given the predominant use of charcoal in the (early) drawings of Rinus Van De Velde, I staged the artist’s studio as a cave-like space, located under the Tim Van Laere Gallery, which represents Van de Velde. This on-site presence of the studio allows the artist to benefit from the immediate vicinity of the gallery’s community, services, professional knowledge and expertise.

Three of the four floors, each equipped with controlled lighting systems, cater for different purposes like collages reflecting the 3 ‘alter ego’ or separate roles of the artist: the drawer, the sculptor or the filmmaker. The lowest level is used for (archive) storage. Each platform is attached to a steel cocoon structure on which lighting, theatrical rigging, artworks … can be fastened. The levels are interconnected by a paternoster lift allowing the artist or his visitors to freely enter or exit the open rooms at chosen level. Some compartments are reserved for transporting commonly used materials. The continuous movement of the installed paternoster lift creates a potential for vertical scenographic installations at gallery level.
For (the mood set of) my design I gathered visual inspiration from the visionary architectural drawings of François Schuiten and the science fiction drama film Metropolis directed by Fritz Lang.