Space with surplus value

The Havenbuilding on the corner of Van Schoonbekeplein and Brouwersvliet in Antwerp is absolutely unexceptional and unremarkable. It was built in the seventies and is a typical example of the office architecture of that time: a square block, eight storeys high, with a glass exterior and a shaft with lifts, stairs and facilities at the core. No thrills, no frills, no interior walls, no refreshing vistas, just concrete pillars encased in glass. It was recently renovated by Paul Van De Poel and partners, the architects’ firm that is regularly commissioned by SD WORX. With the finesse he has made into his trademark, Van De Poel merely accentuated the building and gave it added finish. Though, in the process, he did add a second, copper-covered tower. The most eye-catching innovation is visible on the outside, where rotating slats help to control the amount of incoming sunlight and regulate the temperature. But SD WORX wanted just that little bit more: the illuminating, inspiring contribution of an artist that would transform the building into a special place.

Exploring space

On his first visit to the building, Patrick Merckaert saw it stripped naked. So stark and devoid of walls or inviting open spaces, there did not seem to be any room left for art in whatever form. But he is not the kind of artist who looks for a good spot on the wall to put up a painting. (Which was precisely why he was asked to take on this assignment in the first place.) Pure space is a challenge to him. He re-creates space.

His work is fundamentally architectonic, as the second part of this book will amply demonstrate. He plays with space. And if there is no space, he will invent it. But the commission for the Havenbuilding was much more daunting than anything he had done before. The sheer size of the site compounded the great difficulty of the task. Patrick Merckaert: ‘There were hardly any possibilities, and therefore also hardly any choices to be made. But at the same time, that was the great challenge: to do something meaningful within a game with almost no degrees of freedom.’

Beyond meaning

The core of Merckaert’s work is concerned with meaning. The meaning of words or images. Paradoxically, he uses words and images in an almost abstract way. In doing so, he robs them of their obvious meaning. Whether they want to or not, the viewers add a meaning of their own. Anyone who enters Merckaert’s work will follow his or her own train of thought. However short or fragmentary, each time when your eye catches one of his words or images, somewhere in your brain, a minor neuronal process is sparked off that fits fragments of content or form into a temporary meaningful whole.
The words and images in the Havenbuilding are subtly woven into the building’s fabric. They were cut by a laser beam into very thin sheets of aluminium, attached to the walls and painted in the same shade, or applied to the windows, in a colour that looks as if it was produced by sandblasting. They don’t leap to the eye. The eye merely clings briefly to them when one looks around the halls or rooms. Still other words are intimately hidden in little books placed, like personal treasures, in recesses in each worktop.

The phrenology of a building

The words on the walls and windows are all taken from a phrenological manual from the nineteenth century. Phrenology was the brainchild of the Viennese physician Franz-Joseph Gall. He was a prominent neuro-anatomist who described various parts of the human brain and discovered that the neuronal pathways cross each other in the middle, so that the right-hand side of the brain is connected to the left-hand side of the body and vice versa. His intuition (which has since been proved correct) was that the various parts of the brain are responsible for different cognitive and emotional functions.
But in his enthusiasm for exploring the anatomy, he got sidetracked in the pseudo-science of phrenology. Gall and his followers believed that a person’s character could be deduced from the shape of their brains and, therefore, from the surrounding skull. They developed an immensely complicated system in which every human trait had its place. To them, the architecture of the skull reflected the interplay of brain functions. The system was all-embracing and could explain every aspect of the human mind. In the end, of course, it was explaining nothing.
The only remnants of phrenology are the china heads in museums or antique shops and the list of human traits used by Patrick Merckaert. These words still resonate with the grandiloquence of the romantic worldview of two hundred years ago. Applied to the outer shell of the building, they reflect the phrenology of the building, the casing in which all the listed human characteristics find their expression day after day.

Probing the inside

The big words and general concepts that decorate the walls and windows are subtly counterbalanced by the highly personal little books that are hidden in each workspace. There, Patrick Merckaert probes the essence of the individual. In doing so, he creates an equilibrium between the individuality of each person and the universally human. (It is no coincidence that a globe is blind-stamped into the linen book covers.)
My thoughts, my dreams, my fears, my wishes, … are very simple words, but they reverberate deeply with everything that makes me who I am and you who you are. These are things you do not talk about every day and not even think about consciously, but that are always there, mostly unspoken, ready to be cherished in the little book in your desk. Each of the books is personalised.
And each book has an exact replica. A stack of all these replicas forms a column-like library, covered by glass, in the centre of the empty space between the new and the old tower of the Havenbuilding. Together, they represent the collective intimate memory of all the SD WORX staff who work in the building.
In this way, Patrick Merckaert has succeeded in seamlessly blending his art with the building and with the people who work there. Poles are merged: the outside and the inside, the rational and the intuitive, the social and the personal. Space has four dimensions. Patrick Merckaert adds a proverbial fifth.

Word – image – action

But that is not the only thing Patrick Merckaert has integrated into the Havenbuilding. He has accentuated the movements in the building. He emphasised not only the movements of the people going in and out of the building, which belong to the horizontal plane, but also the vertical movements inside the building.

One of the few areas of available wall space that was to be found on each floor was the area across the hall from the lift doors. On that wall, the face of a man now glides up along with the lift passenger. The pictures are stills of human emotion, frozen aspects of our being human, always already shifting towards the next stage. They never stand still. Everything is process. The simple act of taking the lift, which millions of people are doing at any moment, all over the world, is given an inconspicuous but profound meaning. Merckaert not only suits the action to the word, but adds the picture too. And so, an unremarkable up-and-down motion is made transparent and the stratification of the activities in the building is made visible. It is a symbol of the communication and interaction that continuously links the people inside the building with each other and with those outside.
This integrated work of art was only possible thanks to the intensive interaction and exchange between the building owner, the architects, the contractors, the builders and the artist. Patrick Merckaert: ‘What was created here, what was possible in this building, is quite unique. Whereas the ego-centred Art world is full of people whose main goal is to be the best, here, all parties concerned did their utmost to work together across the boundaries of their disciplines.’ There is no better illustration of what Merckaert’s work is all about. Here, content, form and process seamlessly fit together.

Orientation

There is still another element that regularly appears in Merckaert’s work. He often adds an accent to a space by means of a plain surface, usually in a neutral colour, often black. This signature also features in the Havenbuilding, where it is a hardly noticeable, but no less remarkable presence. The column of the supporting pillar in the south-easterly corner of the building has been painted red. That way, a recognisable line runs right from the bottom to the top of the building. No matter which floor you are on, you always know which direction you are facing. It punctures the uniformity of the landscape offices. The space gains a detail that not only pleases the eye but also directs it to the horizon.
Patrick Merckaert likes to catch the eye. In the entrance hall, a big red surface draws your attention, only to redirect your gaze immediately to a typical Merckaert portrait next to it. It is a typical Merckaert portrait because it is not really a portrait, and because it is more than just a red surface. Rather, they are abstract frames of reference that allow the casual passer-by or the close observer to transform the space. When you look at them, they invite you, implicitly and gently, to realise or to determine where you are. Because wherever you are, you are always looking in a certain direction. It is not that specific direction that is important, but the fact that you are faced towards it. Perhaps that is one of the essences of Patrick Merckaert’s art.

Geerdt Magiels, Antwerp 2002