Hella Jongerius
« natura design magistra »

April 4th - May 30th, 2009

Galerie Kreo

Hella Jongerius celebrates the sculptural quality of design in her latest products, artificial flowers and animal tables.
Jongerius has become known for the way she explores the possibilities and boundaries of both handicraft and industrial techniques and subsequently stretches them beyond the already known. For instance, in many of her works she has succeeded in producing uniqueness within the industrial production process through an optimal exploitation of coincidences and even mistakes.
Apart from this fascination for techniques, the narrative quality of products has always played a mayor role in her work. Stories seem to hide underneath the skin of products, due to the reinterpretation of historical decorative patterns, but also due to the imaginative use of the images of flowers and animals.While exploring the technical and narrative possibilities of designs, Jongerius never crosses the ‘natural’ boundaries of the design field.
She has taken yet another experimental step within her career: the celebration of the sculptural quality of furniture and the ‘missing link’ of her vases, flowers. A flower has become design, a table has become frog, because they were intimately engaged with the material traces of the handcrafted production process.
Louise Schouwenburg