Variations on a Tube25. Jul2011

Although the exposition of Tomás Alonso was in 2009, his objects are still fresh and actual. Therefore this post is about the 'Variations on a Tube' exposition held on the NextLevel Gallery from Paris.
A collection of four limited edition objects commissioned by the gallery were exhibited along side with the Mr. Light series and V&A chairs.

Here is the press release for this exhibition:
"Design appears richer if one first reads its questions (rather than expecting any unequivocal answers). The dimension of Tomas Alonso's work can be understood like different writings of that question mark. There will be as many answers as variations of interpretations of the models. They are sometimes paradoxical. One should always inclined to believe that freedom is a friend of contradiction.
The tube turns around its subject like a tortured trombone. It never really seems to reach it while physically supporting it (design loves structure). Furthermore it remains whole, as if it tried, in this way also, to mark its distinction.The tube is everywhere parts of a single whole without welding, assembling, nor breakages, except a series of bends. A knot on its way to being freed.
Skeletal next to the sheer volume it accompanies (the body of the furniture, or the domestic interior) the tube is transplanted. First of all, it is a historical prosthesis. Along the path that follows the sinuous line of the tube (stepping from Weimar to Milan), the tube rid itself of its old fashioned implications, no longer associated with plumbing or bicycle tires. Once obscene for the bourgeois outside its modest functions, the tube is still full of promises of modernity.
On this map (here temporal rather than spatial) the tube draws arteries and roads whose coloured gradations no longer designate hierarchies. This design would play on the ideology of a highway ‐ the fastest way to get from point A to point B ‐ to propose a spectrum of different routes, favouring a journey over speed. The tubes are just as many detours (design maintains an adulterous relation with the detour, but an essential one." - Pierre Doze

Photos: Nick Ballon; property of NextLevel Gallery