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the Dandy:
A l'Intérieur
04 february – 18 june 2006
Stylemeister: San Ming
Marres opened her doors for the first series of exhibitions, in which, under the title A l'intérieur, the position of the Dandy and the 19th century desire for beauty as a new metaphysics will take a central place. San Ming, who titles himself 'stylemeister' and whose perspectives on his personal life and working methods resemble those of the dandy (for example Duc Jean Floressas des Esseintes from the book Against the Grain by J.K. Huysmans), temporarily inhabited the ground floor of Marres and transformed it into his own private environment.
San Ming is a man with a hightened sensibility for style. A talent that, in Ming's case, is only employed occasionally for clients. His own house provides the perfect platform for his search for the ultimate experience of beauty. Every mise-en-scène of his interior, every object from paintings to furniture, every detail is in service of his carefully constructed scenario, which itself contains a number of plots and subplots. Seen as such, his home is a sort of micro-universe, in which different storylines and perspective can accomodate themselves as long as they are part of a complete experience.
Ming's temporary appartment in Marres is such an inward universe, for which he as its creator took up the role of interior architect, painter, designer, sculptor and decorator. Apparent is the fact that every element of the interior is directly recognizable, in as much as it is a part of a clear style and can be characterized as exemplifying a period or a handwriting. The uniqueness springs from the total image of this interior or, in other words, from the arrangement of its elements, in which every hierarchy, for example between art and design or between the authentic and the copy, and every claim of autonomy is dissolved in favor of the individual perspective of San Ming.
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