RESIDENCE RENDEZ-VOUS *
By Architecture Matters
Art Galleries can invite independent contemporary thinking and living. Galleries, as venues for artists to show their work, challenge us to question ourselves and our time. Gallerists may be the first to know, collectors go in advance, everyday people go to the openings and academics or other interested parties just come along. Exhibition openings are public celebrations.
‘Residence rendez-vous’ perpetuates the moment of the vernissage, the main social event in an art gallery. ‘Residence rendez-vous’ takes over the art gallery with living. By ‘occupying’ the art gallery the work brings primitive experiences to the senses. People observe, talk, listen, eat or simply gather. New perceptions of living create the experience of the gallery as the ‘home’. We enhance the appeal of living in any context.
The work begins with useful objects placed in one of the gallery rooms like nomadic tools in an open container waiting for an opportunity to be placed and used in the venue. Their improvised engagement is the method that unveils the objects’ truth and our own truths about living.
The moment where Daily Camping objects by Dyvik Kahlen are featured on the display is the moment of living. The performative objects thus represent the ‘essential’ when moving to and with different purposes in life, here transported to the many spaces of the gallery as a performative act.
The improvisation enables and encourages spontaneous action. The act of displaying objects through the different spaces of the art gallery is itself communal. It is a shared act of representing ‘home’ and a shared feeling of feeling ‘at home’. The objects are performing with different players including the audience. The anthropological approach questions social implications. It offers a glimpse into Cinéma Vérité where one can see the interaction of real objects, people and art on display, all representing possible truths as aspects of life.
‘C’était un rendez-vous’, Continuous pleasure, Ça va sans dire, This is the life, You can choose to live in the front row or the third row... And, the Party is over once again. Objects are back to storage for the next party to be set up. You are invited.
DAILY CAMPING
By Dyvik Kahlen
Daily Camping is a series of objects that we designed and built over the past years, each developed for a particular project, but now taken out of context to inhabit this gallery.
Underlying our architectural projects is the search for a resilient and flexible architecture. We believe that we need to create rooms that are distinct in character and form but flexible and robust enough to accommodate our rapidly changing lifestyles.
While architecture is heavy, slow and should be made to last, furniture should be light and versatile to accompany us as we move from one building to another. In some places we might stay for a week, a year, or even 20 years. But in the end, we always move on and someone else moves in.
We believe there is something to learn from the nimble mindset of a camper who uses a landscape to place a tent, hang a hammock between trees, cook on rocks. To consider essential comfort seems to be as important as resourceful, durable and light-weigh material. Can we inhabit buildings with a similar mindset: open minded, caring and ready to improvise?
ARCHITECTURE MATTERS
Bios
Architecture Matters is both the name and philosophy under which Amelia Brandão Costa and Rodrigo da Costa Lima practice. The duality of meaning that corresponds to both “matters of architecture” and “architecture that matters” represents the way they perform the various activities that range from architectural projects to curatorial, academic and editorial activities.
Their background comes from the experience of studying and working in Germany, Switzerland and Italy before establishing their office in Porto. Their works and writings have been awarded, published, and exhibited. They have been guest critics, lecturers and juries at different architecture schools in Europe and US.
Amélia and Rodrigo are founding directors of Indexnewspaper and Porto Academy.
DYVIK KAHLEN
Bios
Dyvik Kahlen is an architecture and design practice established in 2010 in London by Christopher Dyvik and Max Kahlen with offices in Portugal and Spain. The practice operates internationally across various scales and sectors, collaborating with clients ranging from public institutions and developers to artists, curators and private individuals.
The main aspiration is to create good spaces that improve the quality of life of those who inhabit them. Underlying Dyvik Kahlen’s work is a desire for objects and spaces that are comfortable and strangely familiar, as much as a fascination for rational and neutral form. They prefer low-tech to high-tech, reuse to rebuild and simple to complex.
EXHIBITION CREDITS
HOST Galeria Nuno Centeno
EXHIBITION TITLE Residence Rendez-Vous / Daily Camping
CONCEPT Architecture Matters / Dyvik Kahlen
CURATORS Amélia Brandão Costa
Rodrigo da Costa Lima
OBJECTS Dyvik Kahlen
GRAPHIC DESIGN Zack Group
PHOTOGRAPHER Antoine Espinasseau