“Resolution″Max Lamb

[Title] Resolution
[Artist] Max Lamb
[Date] March 17 – May 16, 2017

In response to this year’s theme ‘Sense du Objet’, the British designer, Max Lamb has produced RESOLUTION – a series of primitive hand-made plinths using materials and processes intrinsically connected to the craftsmanship of Hermès. Each plinth supports or cradles a Hermès product made from a similar material and/or process, but with a far greater level of skill, craft technique and resolution. The elemental ‘low-resolution’ plinths with traces of hands are designed to emphasise the quality of the Hermès products they support. The plinths are set against pixelated low-resolution videos showing the various processes used to make them. Over-sized hands can be seen operating tools, repeatedly hammering, chiselling, carving, manipulating and transforming the raw materials into shape. The video extracts demonstrate the innate relationship between hand, material and product, and offers an illuminated and engaging backdrop to the Ginza environment that is itself fast, repetitive and both modern and nostalgic.

As the world is increasingly digitalized, Max observes, and society becomes detached from the idea of the hand-made, the products we buy – seemingly abundant, mass-produced, machine-made – are taken more and more for granted. The hand is no longer evident in the objects we use, or perhaps we simply fail to see the hand due to these pre-conceptions. At the same time, dedicated craftspeople around the world continue to become masters of their crafts, capable of achieving ‘perfection’ that to the unaware is indistinguishable from the machine-made. High resolution has become the norm regardless of how it is achieved.

For Max’s RESOLUTION concept all the plinths were made with his own hands in his small London workshop using the various and mostly traditional craft processes that are fundamental to the act of making. The plinths were made with spontaneity and expediency, his naivety resulting in both failures and successes, and ultimately a level of resolution impossible to achieve without the touch of a hand. Screen resolution has become a factor in the way that we interact with craft and design, and online video the contemporary way to learn these traditional skills used to transform raw materials into functional products. We all have the potential to make useful, beautiful things.

Max Lamb
Born in 1980 in Cornwall, Max Lamb is a furniture designer. Max has been tinkering with objects and exploring the natural landscape since he was a small boy; a curiosity that led to an MA in Design Products at the Royal College of Art and subsequently the foundation of his workshop-based design practice.

There is a visual simplicity in his elemental compositions which are stripped of any superfluous detail. Yet there is an integrity to his work, which comes from the consistent principles that he applies — honesty to material, a celebration of the process and of human capability, and its limitations — blending experimentation and rationale to create furniture and products that are honest, intelligible and timeless.

Max produces work for private and public commissions as well as objects for mass-production, and is represented by galleries in London and New York. Max has taught at ECAL in Lausanne and the Royal College of Art in London, and runs regular design workshops for companies and institutions around the world. Exhibitions include My Grandfather’s Tree (London, 2015) and Exercises in Seating (Milan, 2015). Awards include the HSBC Design Collection Commission (2010) and Design Miami/Basel Designer of the Future (2008).
www.maxlamb.org

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