WORKS Back Texts
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RUM Release 04 November 2014
By Frida Jeppsson Prime / Sweden / link
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En frukt i flux
Why would you take upon you to design a piedistal? This anonymous bearer of valuable objects. But when someone now has done just this, of course it has to be discussed backwards and forwards. To place design on a plinth is, in the eyes of the critic, a bit like driving home drunk from the pub. A real dis-service to yourself. But a childish fascination appears when the design itself is a plinth.
An object which is not complete until something is placed on top of it. An object which exists to increase the value of another one. An object which never gets all the attention. A worthy and humble job one might think. So what did Cedric Canaud think when he started designing this anonymous servant? Since the entree of minimalism one could think that the common understanding was that these items were to be white with a smooth finish.
The idea of "The medium is the message" was early engraved in the mind of the "Konstfack–sheep"(Konstfack is an art school/college) Something one has tried to avoid throughout the years by using a white plinth in a white cube. What could you place on a pillar which in itself carries a story outside of its main job of being a timid submissive platform without creating a story upon a story?(creating conflict and confusion muddling the object presented)
Let's first get acquainted with the object at hand before we try to answer this spellbinding question. The plinths have a simple construction and the sections are put together by sliding the panels into pre cut grooves. Every panel is made from a pine plank covered in decorative paper on each side. What, at first glance looks like marble or glass is only an imitation, an eye catching effect. To finish it off, the user places the included tray on top and voila, your plinth is ready for display.
So, back to the question. Display of what? If you look at the designer's images, a tennis ball is your best choice. A lonely green apple seems to also deserve this elevated spot while waiting to be eaten, as well as the brush part of a broom. But hold your laughter, perhaps these everyday objects are symbols of the genius-ness of these plinths? They downgrade whatever is placed on top of them to an everyday level through the dialog which appears between the two objects. The plinth's rickety and unstable being could even remind us that a Fabege egg is merely and thing, an object, if placed on top of it. By using cheap material and simple aestethics the plinth justifies the apple completely. The archetypal shape, a portrait rectangle, still asks you to look towards its top but the materials asks for the objects(plinth and what's on top) to be looked on as symbiotic. It is a fruit in flux. An artefact in an "inbetween-state", about to be consumed. Full stop.
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