UNTITLED IV

This table was created in 2010. In 2018 I decided it needed a coating of epoxy resin to let the different structures and the colours of the wood pop out and make it very sustainable and user friendly.

Untitled IV is a unique piece by Max Jungblut, through which he investigates the relationship between artisanship, nature and interior design. The work follows the principles of the other pieces in the collection, using old tile laths in innovative ways to address, assess and invert their meaning and function. In more than one way, this work can be considered a reflection of the designer’s two-year quest for a new aesthetics in which nature becomes both the resource and the end product of high-end design pieces.

It becomes apparent that the process of finding such a new aesthetics was incorporated within the work, which itself is constructed around the narrative of a journey. In the contrast between its massive scale and the timidity of its fine lines, the work unfolds a story of exploration and process, where ideas are able to grow freely and organically. The lines within this table diverge, meet, connect, separate and follow their own path again.

In a doubled reflection of the designer’s working method, this puts the functionality of the material in their new existence into question again. Once belonging to nature, the basic components of the works that comprise Jungblut’s latest collection were used in the industrial construction of roofs, after which they would be discarded and thrown out. In their metamorphosis into design objects, the gap between nature and industry is narrowed through the artisanship of the working-process and the organic expression of the resulting pieces. With the introduction of the grid of lines and connection, however, it opens the question whether the final work should be approached in utilitarian terms or experiential ones. Far more than simply an object with a clear-cut ‘purpose’, the work is able to activate memory and interpretation, through which can take on multiple forms and tell many stories, despite of its seemingly robust character.

Next to blurring the boundaries between functionality and artistic experience, the work addresses the specific interest expressed through the collection to bridge the gap between the private domain of the interior and the public domain of nature, questioning whether the pieces bring the outdoors indoors or vice versa. It expresses the desire to bring the laborious process of interior design in connection to more natural processes and introduces a point where these might meet.