Adam Nathaniel Furman, ‘Lumalisk’, 2018, Biennale Interieur, Belgium.
Lumalisk was commissioned as one of the monumental centrepieces of the 2018 Biennale Interieur in Belgium, whose scenography by Studio Verter defined a walled piazza within the exhibition trade halls that was populated by three other installations together with this one. A collaboration with Abet Laminati.
A 10 metre high traditional obelisk smashed through a kaleidascopic blender of 21st century ornament, until it becomes a kind of ancient-futuristic digital artefact of hyper mediated, sensuous saturation. It is a contemporary monument that you have to look twice at to make sure its real, and not an illusion from the augmented reality of some crazy-colourful interactive computer game. The motifs that adorn every square centimetre of its surface area are derived from a delirious union of tropes from the Flemish renaissance, chinoiserie and monochromatic Thai prints, sunrise symbolism from Japan to Argentina, Italian radical design of the 70s, and popular culture. Designed as a little inside-out amphitheatre, Lumalisk became both a point of orientation, and a place to meet in the Biennale, a place to rest, chat, and later in the day drink and discuss, that was constantly occupied and used.
