02 february 2025, Wouter van den Eijkel
Grand piano on a meat hook: designer Maarten Baas makes a statement with gallery debut
Maarten Baas really knows how to grab attention. Anyone walking past Galerie Ron Mandos on the Prinsengracht cannot help but notice the two black grand pianos hanging from meat hooks in the front room. Like large slabs of meat, they dangle from the hooks as they slowly spin around.
In 'Crescendo!', the first gallery exhibition by internationally renowned designer Maarten Baas (born in 1978 in Arnsberg, Germany, lives and works in Den Bosch) focuses on musical instruments and contrasts the immaterial beauty they produce with the prosaic, economic reality of everyday life. Whether or not this comparison is favourable to the arts, as the title suggests, remains to be seen.
Maarten Baas, Variations in E Minor (Violin #4), 2024, Galerie Ron Mandos
"For this exhibition, we wanted to rent a separate space, so Maarten could fully adapt it to his vision," says Lars Been of Galerie Ron Mandos. "We had our eyes on an empty supermarket with a butcher’s section — hence the meat hooks." When that plan fell through and the work had to be slightly smaller, Baas’ response was a humorous one. He created a piece no larger than a mailbox package and filled it with a flattened trumpet. The instrument completely fills the glass envelope.
The greatest difference from Baas’ previous clocks and furniture is that those are functional and usable. This is not the case for the instruments he flattened or sculpted into spherical shapes for 'Crescendo!'. For the installation Variations in E minor, he transformed an entire symphony orchestra into spheres. All 56 instruments are arranged on a platform in the back of the gallery by size — from a tiny triangle and violin to a double bass and timpani.
In the accompanying interview, Baas explains that the spheres represent not only the destruction of the instruments, but also hope and a new beginning. “Each piece contains a duality: it is an end and a beginning. In terms of potential, it is the end of the previous form, so it can become something new — it can become a crescendo. Hope and the perspective of moving forward can be found in all my work.”
Maarten Baas, Da Capo Al Fine (Clarinet), 2024, Galerie Ron Mandos
For over 20 years, Maarten Baas has been playfully exposing the unspoken assumptions behind how we interact with our surroundings. His graduation project from the Design Academy in 2002, Smoke, consisted of charred versions of design classics by Mackintosh and Sottsass, as well as antique furniture that included an armoire and grandfather clock.
“In nature, everything is in flux, which creates its own kind of beauty. Yet it’s very human to want to keep things as they are supposed to be and preserve their original beauty. Smoke explores both perceptions of beauty,” says Baas about the series that launched his career. Baas did something similar four years later with Clay, a series of handmade furniture that emphasised imperfection.
Both Smoke and Clay were included in The New York Times’ 2012 list of the Top 25 Design Classics of the Future. With Real Time (2009) — a series of clocks displaying the passage of time through filmed performance — Baas moved further toward conceptual art, though still within the form of a functioning clock.
Design pieces by Maarten Baas in 'Crescendo!'. Photo: Jonathan de Waart.
Charred grand piano
Baas’ interest in musical instruments is not entirely new. He previously charred a grand piano and then made it playable again. The difference with the grand pianos in 'Crescendo!' is that they are unplayable — and unlike the other instruments in the exhibition, never have been. These pianos are made of lacquered plastic. Hanging from meat hooks, they resemble soulless slabs of meat, as Baas describes them in the interview.
The unplayability of the instruments in 'Crescendo!' marks a fundamental shift in Baas’ work. Rather than questioning how we perceive our surroundings, he now asks what value society assigns to something as intangible as art, and music in particular. A crushed instrument is literally and figuratively worthless. Is a grand piano, a harp or timpani just another ‘product’ like a piece of meat or a television or should we value it differently?
In other words, what value do we assign to art? It’s a pressing question, but ultimately one for policymakers to answer. Gallery owner Ron Mandos interprets Baas’ deformed instruments as a critique of current cultural policies: "To me, his new work symbolises the severe budget cuts currently being made to the arts and culture sector." Whether things will truly reach a crescendo remains uncertain.
For those interested in Baas’ design furniture, a brief overview of his work is also on display at the back of the gallery.
