Cityscape Arne Quinze

CITYSCAPE The Book (Gestalten, Berlin, 2008)
Arne Quinze

Edited by: Max Borka
Release: January 2008
Price: € 35,00 / $ 55,00 / £ 25,99 (Incl. 6% VAT)
Format: 30 x 24 cm
Features: 144 pages, full colour, hardcover
Language: English
ISBN 978-3-89955-203-4

Carefully calculated but also flawlessly improvised: a forest of thirty 12-metre high stilts supports 60 kilometres of wooden slats, held together in a frantic, criss-crossing rhythm by 240,000 nails. Arne Quinze’s Cityscape, built in the summer of 2007 in Brussels, is at least as spectacular as Uchronia, the wooden cathedral built and burned by the Belgian artist during the Burning Man Festival in the Black Rock Desert one year earlier, and which catapulted him to instant fame.

Built on a wasteland that lay in the heart of the city’s smar test shopping area and which was to become a pre-eminent symbol of (the lack) of urban policy in the capital of Europe, Cityscape had to evoke and capture the frenzied speed of passing traffic and city life in ‘a frozen movement’ – and transform it into the complete opposite – a place of contemplation and silence. In so doing, the project was not only meant to breathe new life into a somewhat forgot ten Brussels neighbourhood, but also act as an invitation for a master plan to redesign the whole city. But Cityscape was not just about City Marketing. The final result had the astounding precision of a startled flock of starlings that hangs still in the air for one moment, in perfect formation, before dissolving – a moment in which the DNA of disorder reveals its order, particles that seem to be organized at random suddenly synchronize and combine into a revelation of the sublime, the harmonious chaos that is also Quinze’s political model.

Art and design critic Max Borka and photographers Thierry van Dort and Lionel Samain followed the building of Cityscape day by day. For Quinze’s latest masterpiece was so much more than just one sculpture. Before the work in progress was frozen in a final shape, there was a constant flow`of sculptures merging into one another, from a gallows’ hill and a crown of thorns, to a wood, web and nest, or a Manta Ray. This book is the sole witness remaining of this process and is therefore also much more than a document on Cityscape. It is Cityscape. Are you prepared? Then get ready for the Quintessential Arne Quinze.

Photographers: Thierry Van Dort, Lionel Samain

This book at Gestalten.com
Arne Quinze

Arne Quinze Works
The Sequence

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