Rotating Kitchen: Artist Turns Room Upside Down
Call it artsy, pretentious or pointless if you will … but like the scene of a multi-car crash there is something morbidly fascinating about watching an entire room turned upside down, spilling its contents slowly (at first – then quickly) all over the place.
A steady spin cycle takes this rather drab and cluttered kitchen-in-a-box from right-side up to upside down (then even further around) over the space of ten minutes. Some things fall quickly while others (like the ceiling light) twist and turn before finally breaking.
Not to oversimplify, Zeger Reyers works at the intersection of natural processes and man-made forms – allowing erosion and time to reclaim objects in some cases while simulating environmental objects or forces of nature in others.
“The kitchen is becoming an increasingly important part of our homes. Architects’ ideas of how modern flats should be designed and the increasing number of cooking shows on television in the last years seem to have triggered the transformation of the kitchen from a practical place to a central social space it now is in many modern homes.”
“Originally, the kitchen was like a microcosm in our houses, a practical place where things were being produced, where food was being prepared. The kitchen used to be a working space more than a living space. Nowadays both uses are combined in spacious and loft-like flats with open kitchens. The distance between the cook and his family and guests is minimised by the fluidity with which the living room transforms into kitchen space and dining room. The term ‘naked chef’, as coined by Jamie Oliver – one of the first TV cooks to have implemented ‘fusion cooking’ in everyday cooking –, is well in place for these new homes: the cook performs before the eyes of all those present, be it family, friends or people that visit for the first time.”
“To cook is to create and cooking needs inventiveness as much as it needs discipline. A cook is in the kitchen what a captain is on the bridge of a ship. The world as a kitchen, where ingredients become food, which is being cooked up, heated, kept in the fridge, reheated, deep-frozen, put in the microwave, thrown away, left to rot… “
