Domènec

DOMÈNEC (Mataró, Barcelona, 1962).
"Un lloc", 1999.
Installation that recreates a possible room of the housing building "Unité d'habitation" made by Le Corbusier in Marseille in the 40s.
Wood, iron and formica.
Work published on the artist's website.
Bibliography consulted: "Domènec. Ni aquí ni enlloc", MACBA.
Measurements: 32 x 200 x 80 cm (table); 81 x 36 x 36 x 36 cm (chair); 102 x 82 x 31 cm; 84 x 159 x 30 cm.

In the installation "Un lugar", Domènec reflects on architecture and, in particular, on the habitat and urban space in which human beings reside (the interior and exterior of a house, the urban landscape that surrounds it, etc.). The installation consists of four elements: a bed, a chair and a bookshelf (three objects that are part of the basic furniture of any home) and a "model-furniture" of the "Unité d'Habitation" residential building designed by Le Corbusier in Marseille in the 1940s, a paradigm of the attempt to create a new way of living, both individually and collectively. "Unité d'Habitation" is, in fact, a concept of residential typology of the modern movement that understood the house as a projection, extension and prolongation of the "I". The interest of the work lies, therefore, in the change of perspective made by Domènec between the different elements: for the person who lives in the room, this four-walled habitat is his real world, his true reality, while Le Corbusier's model is a mere "reference" and a housing container. Of course, the relationship with the idea symbolized by the model is inevitable in our society, since each floor is contained in a common residential building. In the MACBA document "Domènec. Hi aquí ni enlloc" the Catalan institution explains "With "Un lloc" and other of his works, Domènec reflects on some paradigmatic buildings of modernity and his desire to regenerate social housing and communal life. Precisely from the crisis of modernity, from the verification of the breakdowns of the modern movement, is from where Domènec deploys a research and a critical essay that materializes in the form of sculptures, installations, photographs, videos or interventions in public space. All these projects are fundamentally articulated around issues such as the distance between utopias and social realities, speculation on the public dimension of architecture and the ideological precepts that determine it, the socio-historical mechanisms and what gets in the way, or the factors that condition memory and oblivion. The analysis and questioning of the discourses of authority and power in different contexts places us in the variables and measurements of disorder, in the measure of doubt".