Maarten Van Severen (BE), designer

(autotranslated) A table, a chair, a chair, a floor cabinet, a horizontal locker, a lamp … ordinary things, everyday objects … But if they were designed by Maarten Van Severen, they appear redefined and driven to enperfectie essence.

Van Severen is not a ‘minimalist’. This term he fends off. The work of Van Severen is a very labor-intensive research on prototypes to the essential remains. The term ‘designer’ he fends off. Van Severen is a “maker,” a craftsman who uses materials until they serve perfectly. A maker will mount some secrets. With his growing oeuvre of objects and interventions, he built an international reputation which brought him among others in collaboration with Rem Koolhaas in the Paris Villa dall’Ava and home near Bordeaux.

In the recently published monograph “Maarten Van Severen (Ludion) decision Geert Bekaert text contribution thus:” Like the great works of the past that continue to happen until our time there and in introducing a different concept of time, also features the work of Maarten Van Severen an inner strength and self-evident. Even though it does everything to escape any kind of pomposity and as simply as possible, as table, chair or cabinet, just in the depth of that ordinariness is his poetic rapture. “Dieu est chez chez lui tous les vrais poètes” wrote Jules Supervielle. In the table, chair and closet poetry has retreated. “