In spite of being only 31 years old, Dutch designer Maarten Baas has achieved a very prestigious position within the international design community. Bass was still a student at the Design Academy Eindhoven when his Knuckle candle holder – actually his first piece – was taken in production.
The “Knuckle” candleholder
In 2002, Baas’ burned furniture series, Smoke, was nominated for the René Smeets award and for the Melkweg award at the Design Academy. Originated from classical designs of Gaudi, Earmes, Rietveld, Sottsadd, amidst others, the creations were carefully burned with a blow torch, and salvaged by translucent resin sealant.
Having been exhibited in various countries, and in a 25-piece solo exhibition (titled Where There’s Smoke…) at the Moss gallery in New York, Smoke achieved worldwide exposure. Several pieces were acquired by museums and by renowned collectors, such as trend forecaster Lidewij Edelkoort and designer Philippe Starck.
The “Smoke” series
The “Smoke” series
The “Smoke” series
In 2005, Baas founded the Baas & den Herder studio, a partnership with producer Bas den Herder. With the venture, Baas was able to develop larger scale projects and commissioned work for hotels, restaurants, galleries and museums in several countries.
The most famous of such assignments are the collaboration with Ian Schrager for New York’s Gramercy Park Hotel, as well as Baas’ work for the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands; each of the Gramercy Park Hotel’s rooms received Smoke furniture and also pieces of Baas’ Clay collection (made of a metal skeleton and synthetic clay, launched at the 2006 Salone del Mobile in Milan), all of which were handmade at Baas & den Herder studio. The Groninger Museum received a new collection, which Baas made using antique furniture from the original museum collection.
The “Clay” series
The designer launched his following collection, Sculpt, at the 2007 Salone del Mobile. Sculpt is characterized by limited editions of oversized furniture, based on quick sketches. There are only eight pieces of each work.
The “Sculpt” series
2009 brought great changes for Marteen Bass: his studio is now exclusively focused on designing works that are being executed by other companies. Baas was also named Designer of the Year by Design Miami, for which he created a commissioned over-scaled piece named The Shell. With The Sheel, the designer trespasses, once again, the boundaries of standard design.
Maarten Baas’ pieces are sold by the Mint Shop in London, by Tools Galerie in Paris, by spazio Rossana Orlandi in Milan, by Moss in New York and by Cibone in Tokyo.
In an area of more than 500 square meters, Bass presented, during the 2009 Milan Design Week, an artistic investigation on the concept of time. Quite unique clock models were featured on the exhibition – titled Real Time -, which combined design, film and theater in order to question the notion of passing time.
The Grandfather Clock is a big scale analog clock, run by a human being instead of mechanical components. Standing up inside the clock while smoking cigarettes, an actor updates the clock’s hand as to indicate real time. The pointers, however, are nothing more than drawings continuously made and erased on a screen.
The video Sweepers Clock portrays an actual 12-hour interval, during which two actors, standing on a round-shaped platform, swipe materials that seem like garbage and debris; the material constitutes the pointers of a clock, moved by the actors according to the passing of time.
Baas’ Analog Digital Clock video explores the contradictory concepts of human labor and digital work. Hidden behind a screen, a person manually updates time, switching numbers so that viewers see what it looks like a typical digital clock, with black background and bright red numbers.
Unlike the other Real Time installations, World Clock does not rely on minimalism. Confined inside a cubicle (prepared to look like a messy office) in the actual exhibition space, an actor embodies an office employee that moves two office utensils on his desk every minute, so that it looks like a clock’s hand showing real time.
Click on the links above to watch videos for each installation.
