Hermès Space Module – Florian Claar


[Title] Hermès Space Module
[Artist] Florian Claar
[Date] May 21 – July 14, 2009

A shoe floats weightlessly through a 17th century dining-room; looking out of the windows stars pass by, as the whole room with a warm and elaborate rococo painting, full of earthly themes and landscapes covering the entire ceiling, seems to be traveling through empty space in a cold metallic capsule….

After being asked to design Maison Hermès window display exploring the annual theme of “The Beautiful Getaway”, the artist Florian Claar almost instantly felt that the idea of travel should be stretched beyond earthly limits.

In 1969, NASA introduced a completely new, revolutionary style in travel fashion, accessories and machineries with their first successful moon-landing. The revolutionary use of materials and shapes created a dramatically different visual esthetic, which remains iconic and timeless even today.

Now, 40 years later and with new space missions in development such as the ‘Orion’ missions to Mars, the definition of the style of interstellar travel and life in space becomes a new question. Rather than the radical revolutionary ideas of space-travel in the 60’s, there seems to be a renaissance of pre-space-age, even pre-industrial-age esthetics. Almost like chronologic counter-movements, historic styles from past centuries collide with revolutionary visions of the future. Similar to early 20th century ocean-liners, which were built in the style of 19th century palaces, enclosed in shells of, stylistically quite opposite, industrial machinery, space travel also might, all technical limitations aside, develop stylistically surprisingly different in future explorations.

For this window design for Maison Hermès, Claar thought it would be fun to stretch the idea of cultural chronologic counter-movements a little further… about 400 years in every direction. The present (the 21st century) can be seen in the contrast between elements of the 25th and the 17th century… the fleeting moment of the ‘now’ can be best experienced as the time between the past and the future.

Florian Claar
Florian Claar is a contemporary artist born in 1968 in Stuttgart, Germany. Graduated from the National Art University of Stuttgart in 1994, completing the course of study in sculpture. In recent years, he has attracted a major following for creating a number of sculptures for display at Tokyo Midtown, the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa and other high-profile public spaces. Claar has also turned out a large number of pieces inspired by music, mathematics and other rich-ranging sources, with the original expressions instilled in those works earning stellar tributes from an ever-growing audience. Currently resides in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.

Copyrighted Image