Friday, 14 April 2006 | Levent OZLER
Inner Tube by Maria Blaisse
Inner Tube
Maria Blaisse in Conversation with Henk Barendregt
25 March through 28 May 2006
This multimedia presentation focuses on the work of designer and artist Maria Blaisse. It investigates and documents how Blaisse discovers new shapes and applications in a prosaic object: the inner tube. As she takes it apart and recombines the pieces, new objects are born, in materials including rubber, foam, gauze and textile.
Maria Blaisse
This is the first time Maria Blaisse's work has been shown together. The objects, photographs and films can be read as an argument for an exceptional way of designing centred around careful attention, modesty and surprise.
Parallels Between Design and Mathematics
In preparation for Inner Tube, Maria Blaisse spoke with the mathematical logician Henk Barendregt. What happens if you turn an inner tube inside out through its valve? How do you change its round shape to a seaweed-like structure? What makes an inner tube different from a sphere?
The inner tube's shape is an object of research for mathematics, too. "Mathematics is about the infinite possibilities of human thought," Barendregt says, "and that infinity only takes on meaning when you limit yourself. Creativity requires dogmas - basic assumptions we can examine, intuitively and systematically. The way Maria Blaisse has been working with inner tubes for twenty years is an example of this."
Maria Blaisse (1944) studied textile design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. She has participated in large exhibitions and shown her work in galleries and museums in the Netherlands and abroad. She has worked with designers including Issey Miyake and Jan Jansen. She was awarded the Emmy van Leersum Prijs (2000) for her work.
Henk Barendregt (1947) holds the chair in Foundations of Mathematics and Computer Science at Radboud University Nijmegen and is an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2002 he received the Spinozapremie, a prestigious Dutch prize for scientific researchers.
Dingeman Kuilman (1961), director of Platform 21 and the Premsela Foundation, curated Inner Tube.
Platform 21: http://www.dexigner.com/directory/detail/7495/
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