an exhibition as an idea of an exhibition
it doesn’t propose anything but ideas of objects they are all made of paper and glue, cardboard and tape, painted or not, sometimes showing wooden parts ideas dressed and masked we focused on the primitive and elementary essence of paper, and identical qualities of the members of its extended family, it is humble and souple, precise and cheap, and still it keeps the symbolic value of the initial virgin paper sheet these objects pretend to be what they are not – they keep being reluctant to be used in the function they demonstrate they are also infinitely precise at the same time – they are true lies, told in a tongue which comes as close as possible to their inner truth the item here on show doesn’t really exist though, but as a projection of what it may become (within a week or two years, it depends) the spectral quality it bears also lays in this in-between status, one of a decisive stage, which will soon become neglectable the value of this 3d, 1:1 scale representation, inhabits its nature: a promise already loaded with compromise design is almost entirely contained here: it is solely in taking into account multiple constraints that it may become a project the interest of these models and mock-ups is in the accuracy of the translation of a vast amount of decisions anticipation of their construction, substance they are going to be made of, uses that will be made of them once they are manufactured

stefan diez, the designer, chooses to show an ultimate stage of the mock-up process
the moment that comes just before a prototype is required then you’ll ignore about everything that regards doubts, repentance and choices, the various attempts that lead to the results we here see the object is as modest and silent from this point of view as the paper that it’s made of an ultimate lie – to humbleness we now add sincerity:
this exhibition quite serioulsy inflated in between stefan’s workshop in munich, and its destination at the chaufferie gallery in strasburg a certain amount of items got added the exhibition grew about 9m3 some recent models; such as an e15 chair and new proposals for thonet projects that were shown in public just now, by the end of april, during the salone in milan others, on the contrary, were created some 5 years earlier and get shown to light anew after a long retirement as long as the issue here is mainly ghosts, almost not having any weight, we decided we may invite more pieces than initialy imagined going for the risk of betraying the title of this intimate meeting, “1m3”, when it becomes more like an assembly “1m3”, after all, it is only a volume, belonging more to an accountancy dimension probably what’s the least important, in here too as precise as it shall be, design loves pretexts, before anything else