The labyrinth: Architecture, Design and other Arts

 

Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid 2003
Museu de les Arts Decoratives, Barcelona 2003
Palacio Nacional de Cultura NDK, Sofia 2004
International Design Center, Budapest 2004

 

Curator: Juli Capella 

 

When he was young, Oscar wanted to be Michelangelo, and the whole of his life has been a gradual abandonment of this supreme goal. Nonetheless, he has pursued the Renaissance ideal as few contemporary architects have done, devoting himself to architecture, interior design, industrial design and furniture, painting and writing.    This exhibition brings together, somewhat quirkily arranged within the alphabetical order, some of his abundant creations, which plunge us into a labyrinth of concerns, proposals, obsessions and controversies. All of this sprinkled with extracts from the opinions of some of his illustrious friends, who have chosen a “voice” to describe the author.Fiercely impassioned and individualistic, Postmodern without feeling guilty about it, more classical than avant-garde, more of a perseverer than a virtuoso, more enthusiastic than analytic, Oscar sees himself an anarcho-bougeois who does not believe that art progresses and feels that the public should be the only judge of his work.

 

DESIGN

Everything around us has been designed, with more or less felicitous results. . People who say that there is too much design are perhaps referring to bad design, since there are still many things in our daily lives which could be improved thanks to good design. Graphic, industrial, interior, architectural, urban design: all these are disciplines practised by OTB. Everything, from a spoon to a city, whether on a small or a grand scale, is designed. Everything is design, and there is a single coherent thread linking all these disciplines, even though they are so very different in practice.

    They are always driven by an underlying idea, there are always the explanatory drawings and someone to carry out and produce the project.  It has to be said that the degree of satisfaction, once the work is completed, is usually directly proportional to the time and effort spent on it . The satisfaction involved in seeing a finished ashtray cannot be compared to the satisfaction of seeing a finished building.

 

INDUSTRIAL DESIGN

Design. With no distinction made between industrial design and craft design. What matters is the creative process, not the method of production, which nowadays can be by various hybrid means. Moreover, most products, in the search for individuality, are to some extent virtually hand-made, and in any country of the world.