ModernMantra (la Maison)
A text installation by Thomas Broomé
Thomas Broomé, born 1971. Is a well renowned Swedish artist with an international base.
Thomas has worked in a wide range of materials and expressions, all signified by an elaborate sense of detail. His work is found in-between our usual dichotomies; it is both simple and complex, elegant and crude, naive and mature, traditional and futuristic… it exists on the borders of our common understanding of the world, our agreement of what is real.
In the custom built installation for Hermès Maison, Shanghai Broomé has worked with calligrams, forms made from text. The result is an apartment inspired by the Hermès line of furniture and accessories, but with a twist; The word is the image and the image is the word. The objects in the windows are a play with how we depict and describe the world through representational systems. A chair is a chair, but it is both a form and a description and thus it becomes a neither/nor, since you cannot simultaneously see them both. To further enhance this clash of representations Thomas has for the first time moved from the two dimensional works on paper, into a third dimension made out of painted steel.
A mantra is a sacred utterance a repetion of words that when made audible has the power to change ones state of conscious thought.
The idea of the chair is tangible until it is made into form, until it is is represented in the world, then and only then is it a functional object and can be used in our everyday life. What would for instance happen if the chair was made of the word table, would it still be a chair, even though it tells us it is a table?
