SPAM-CONTEMPORARY, Düsseldorf
Björn Severin (1968, Orsoy am Rhein) has been practicing architecture and urban planning for more than 20 years. In the course of the Nineties Severin developed his feeling for larger structures, for the coherence between architecture and landscape, but his most significant work was and still is made in the (post)modern, (post)industrial city. In that sense he has made use of the possibilities of drawing and installations in his exploration of the expressive qualities of geometrical forms, and the spatial shape of public space.
His side specific installation Urban Blend for the SPAM CONTEMPORARY in Düsseldorf involved plastic boxes which are usually used for transportation of greens and fruit in Nord Europe. Björn Severin presented these boxes as a modular system of his vision of urban and architectural structures. The enigmatic installation plays with expressiveness of light and shadow, with the contrast between the volume of the building and the detail, with structuring effects of perspective. Severin’s fascination with the obsessions of modern architecture – module, repetition, regularity- led the exhibition that embodies the geometrical clarity of Donald Judd’s metaphysical projections. His piled-up plastic boxes recall the natural elegance of a metropolis. These reminiscences reveal the extreme consequence of the visual idiom of the average modern city planning and architecture through the universally interchangeable architectural forms. The exhibition encompasses not only architectural elements but also allusions to human use, to history and embedding in space, in the urban landscape.