Muller Van Severen: Pianos

Tim Van Laere Gallery presents Pianos, its second solo exhibition by Muller Van Severen. The exhibition features seven unique, high-gloss lacquered volumes that occupy a space between furniture, sculpture, and musical instrument. Their silhouettes evoke the piano, yet none can be played. Stripped of their original function, they take on new lives as cabinets, tables, benches, and wall-mounted objects.

“We have long been fascinated by the piano as an object: its deep, glossy lacquer, its curves and sharp transitions, its almost architectural presence in a space. Even in silence, a piano possesses a particular monumentality. And yet, something strange happens when no one can play it: it becomes a beautiful sculpture designed around a function that remains inaccessible to many.” —Muller Van Severen

In Pianos, this tension becomes the point of departure. What happens when the piano is separated from music? When it is reimagined for those of us who are not musicians? Its familiar form is opened up, distorted, and reassembled. What remains is no longer quite a piano, yet it has not entirely relinquished the qualities that made it recognizable as one. The title Pianos refers not only to the musical instrument but also to the Italian word piano, meaning level, plane, or floor. The shelves and horizontal surfaces of the objects form small architectural compositions, built from a succession of piani. The piano thus shifts from musical instrument to an interplay of volumes, levels, and functions. This layered approach extends to the installation as a whole, where the floor, walls, and varying heights come together to create a spatial composition.

Six of the seven works incorporate a spherical opaline glass shade. Where sound would ordinarily emerge from the instrument, light now takes its place. One dimension gives way to another. The objects also evoke the intimacy of a jazz club late at night: a dimly lit room, gleaming surfaces, subdued light, and the melancholic atmosphere of Chet Baker’s music. This transformation of function also brings Marcel Duchamp to mind. A familiar object is removed from its conventional context and reconsidered. Yet these works go beyond the logic of the classic readymade. The piano is not simply displaced; it is reimagined, both formally and functionally. Its identity remains recognizable even as its meaning shifts. René Magritte, too, seems to linger in the background. His streetlamps, nocturnal light sources, and enigmatic objects evoke a reality that feels at once familiar and impossible. The luminous spheres in Pianos possess a similar ambiguity. They give the objects a practical function while imbuing them with a dreamlike quality. It is as though these pieces of furniture belong to a world much like our own, where things behave just slightly differently. Pianos thus inhabits the space between utility and imagination, furniture and sculpture, light and music. The piano falls silent, but it does not disappear. Its form, sheen, and presence endure. Only its function has changed.

Fien Muller and Hannes Van Severen began their artistic collaboration under the name Muller Van Severen in the spring of 2011. Since then, the duo has received numerous awards and developed a wide range of collaborations, presenting their work in museums and galleries around the world, including the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, Galerie Kreo, Massimo De Carlo, Andreas Murkudis, and Tim Van Laere Gallery. Today, Muller Van Severen is regarded as one of the most influential European design studios of its generation. Their work is held in numerous public collections, including the Vitra Design Museum (Germany), Centre Pompidou (France), Le Grand-Hornu (Belgium), Musée des Arts Décoratifs (France), Design Museum Gent (Belgium), and CNAP (Centre National des Arts Plastiques, France).

Tim Van Laere Gallery 
Antwerp–Rome