PRACTICE FOR THE LOVE OF THEORY

    

Maxime Prananto runs an artistic design and production practice. It intervenes in the domain of architecture and infiltrates art spaces. The practice consists of public and private commissions as well as autonomous work. It sometimes functions as a production studio for other artists and makers.

The practice deals with the simultaneous conception and production of objects, scenography, furniture, exhibitions and sculpture. While its output is varied, each undertaking relies on a voluntary set of conceptual and physical boundaries. This practice attempts to reserve a substantial portion of its efforts for theory and reflection.

Underlying themes of the practice include manufacturing, logistics and iconography in the built environment. The attempt within the practice is for work to materialize intelligently within certain circumstances and references without the result of a self-intelligent work. In this sense, the aim is to be neutral and to propose a matter-of-factness about the conditions in which work is being made. Nevertheless, all interventions reflect a sensitivity to the beauty of constraints and gather meaning throughout the entirety of their process. 

This practice is linked to several courses and studios in architecture and interior architecture at the University of Leuven.


Autocrat Table
2021 


Prototype developed for ‘SQ Central’, a group show by MANIERA

Low Table Autocrat Table consists of twelve identical, folded sheets of steel. Its name speaks to a system's capacity to consolidate, to self-inflict and to perpetuate previous decisions. The table can be read as evidence of both the feats and the strict limitations of standardisation. In the case of a table, this enforced uniformity is quite clearly imposed on a typology that doesn't need it.

Perhaps the reversal of modularity is at play here. What we know to be a singular table is forcefully divided into identical elements, which not only redefines its overall form, but equally births a new, mini-typology: that of a piece of steel which in and of itself makes no sense but when multiplied reinstates the idea of that table.

Once reassembled, unexpected details emerge from this process of division and unification. The elements' uniformity reflects a proportional relationship between compromise and consistency. What remains, in the form of a table, is a piece of evidence supporting only a self-imposed trajectory, a certain virtue in its coherence and a definite scrutiny towards linear thinking and its transformative power.


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