The Pleasure of Architecture

The title of this essay is similar to the one that the architect-theoretician Bernard Tschumi used for one of his texts. His title is a reference to Roland Barthes' Le plaisir du texte. Through this Tschumi demonstrates in a striking way his method of working and philosophy. First he specifically links archi­tecture and text by stressing pleasure. Moreover he introduces, on a miniature scale, an intertext in his title: a citation without brackets that surfaces as a statement in a text and becomes an integral part of it. This is a strategy that Tschumi uses repeatedly. I get my reference to Tschumi from a text by Louis Martin on his architectural theory.

The layering of these references and its intertextuality, seem to be a perfect instrument to describe the work of Agnes Maes. In her recent paintings and drawings the reference to architecture and text has become more and more explicit. It's the logical outcome of a search of many years in which Maes always has been fascinated by space and place. Although the human figure is (mostly) nonexistent in her work, it is very specifically present through the viewer. Most of her work after all deals with the subjective experience of space. Maes gets her inspiration for her architectural images mostly from magazines. This means that the experience of space derives from looking at images, being explicit­Iy outside the real architecture, She quotes Le Corbusier or Mies Van der Rohe, but also more recent architects, without however making any specific references. She rather annexates them, makes them anonymous like Tschumi's intertext. What is left are existential spatial experiences like in 'Brown Inner Room 11' (1997) or 'Open and protected' (1998).
 

Barthes puts in Le plaisir du texte both text and reading opposite to each other, being each others double. Only a so-called 'third term', pleasure, is able to solve this contradiction. It can be connec­ted to Bartes' notion of the erotic as a hidden dimension of the city. Tschumi uses his theory for his own ideas on architecture and combines it with a model of Denis Hollier. He was the first to link archi­tecture and text in his analysis of Bataille. Hollier used an architectural metaphor that he borrowed from philosophy: the interplay between pyramid and labyrinth. Philosophy is caught in the web of experience (nature) and tries to erect a pyramide of reason (science) to be able to overlook and understand. Tschumi connects the pyramid with a so-called conceived and the labyrinth with a per­ceived space. The only solution for his paradox is as with Barthes a third term: the experienced space. Architecture becomes in Tschumi's view thus an erotic object par excellence.
 
It may seem far fetched to connect the work of Agnes Maes with Tschumi's theory. AII ingredients are however present. Her work is just as layered and makes (very literal) references to architecture and text. The 'erotic' element is amongst others apparent in her observation, her accuracy and also her use of layering. Already from an early stage on Maes' introduced texts and measurements as a layer on top of her architectural images. The measurements point towards the size of her canvas and serve as an objective reference point. The Latin texts rather create a distance in being a dead language. At the same time they refer to a subjective experience of space: Memoria, Esse est percipi, Simulacra. Randomly placed dots have a similar function as the measurements and form an extra security hold. While the architectural images can be connected with the labyrinth (being only parts of a larger unknown whole), the dots and texts could refer to Tschumi's pyramide. They seem to try to understand space. A solution for this paradox is yet another layer, a 'third term'. It's the transparant screen that appears regularly in Maes' paintings. It is literally placed between conceived and per­ceived space, being transparant and hiding at the same time. Is it experienced space? It seems in any case to be the bridge between all oppositions that Maes introduces in her work. It is also pre­sent in her impressive series of drawings as a recurrent oil stain. It is used by Maes as a starting point for architectural notations, outlines, dots and planes that sometimes have a spatial character and sometimes represent a map.
 

The regular recurrence of particular elements -the stain in the drawings, dots, screens, Latin texts etc.-, the explicit repetitiveness of Maes' work are another indicative of pleasure. Each repetition is a new start and certainly not a dead end. The repetition, that is never exactly the same, is also apparent in the use of symmetry and reflection, like in 'Reflected and not-reflected (B.N.)' (1997). On two identical canvas­es there's a cubelike form, seemingly exactly mirrored and yet again not so. The screen, that takes a prominent place, plays a similar game with semi-identical placed squares, lines and dots. The texts in both canvases point to colour contrasts: viridis or green in the left canvas and caeruleus or blue in the right one. In the interplay between equality and difference Maes toys with the viewer without tripping into a coarse 'look for the ten differences'. That play in itself, play in general, is again an indication for pleasure. It reminds at the same time of Derrida. Through his notion of deconstruction the sign no longer reflects a fixed meaning but doubles, redoubles and dedoubles its content. Deconstruction thinks writ­ing as a game with language and that is according to Derrida the play of the world. Playing is thinking the world and isn't that exactly what Agnes Maes does? Again and again there's the playful interaction between real and not-real, reality and fiction. The pleasure of the play is there in her observation that notices all nuances in the layering. This becomes very clear in 'Incidence of light (Esse est percipi)' (1996) in which Maes introduces the sunlight in her studio as an extra layer. But also her sense of colour - always broken, inbetween colours - is remarkable. Look for instance at the series 'Simulacra' (1997). The fragmentation of Maes' work produces yet another parallel with Tschumi. To him architecture is an assemblage of fragments. It is an intertextual practice in which fragments are quotations without brack­ets.
 
The explicit movement inbetween things is a typical trademark of contemporary art. Agnes Maes also moves inbetween things, but she doesn't do so in a fashionable way. Her indefiniteness, her moving to and from in the fascinating abyss between signifier and signified, is a very honest. The result is twice as gripping because she makes use of a so called old fashioned medium. But with her work Agnes Maes proves that painting has an incredible urge to survive and is in itself capable of being inbetween.
 
 

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