With Back in 5 min, Robert Stadler has produced a suspenseful juxtaposition of historical and contemporary spatial impact and design for the MAK DESIGN SALON #03. Similar to a director, the Viennese-born and Paris-based designer studied intensely the “script” of the Empire and Biedermeier-era décor of the MAK Branch Geymüllerschlössel in order to produce his own reinterpretation of the location. Memorable room installations combine tradition-steeped furniture with newly created objects and toy on many levels with the unique character of this former summer residence.
Stadler contrasts the summer residence’s bourgeois furnishings with simple pieces of furniture from rustic cottages like stools and benches, “whose multifunctional, reductive, and mobile design can be interpreted as a precursor to Biedermeier furniture,” says the designer. Provocatively blending into the setting, the stools Aymeric (2014) and the benches Cora and Dora (2014) can be interpreted as “work furniture,” for example. In keeping with the period’s contemporarily crafted materials, they were produced using an aluminium honeycomb sandwich panel, and seem to suit country life just as well as the Biedermeier period or the present day.
Stadler’s complex scenography for Back in 5 min displaces its visitors into a “moment between,” as if the location were on the point of reconfiguring itself. Illuminated with strobe lighting, the viewer can only briefly catch a glimpse of two rooms’ interiors before they disappear into the darkness. Comparable to peepshows, this flashing intensifies the designer’s intended effect. “Robert Stadler is part of a new generation of designers whose intense authorship in terms of content and form—ignoring the boundaries between disciplines—means they don’t run the risk of lingering self-referentially in the art or industry system,” says Thomas Geisler, curator of the MAK Design Collection, of this year’s choice of artist for the MAK DESIGN SALON #03. Stadler follows on from design interventions by Studio Formafantasma and Michael Anastassiades, and his installation will open on the 13th of September and will be on show until 30th of November 2014.
