When in late 2011 TBA21 acquired a fragment of a shed roof designed by the architect Jean Prouvé (1901–1984) — a wing-like structure initially built as part of a roof for a school in Orsay in 1956 — Simon Starling’s reaction was to literally “prove Prouvé,” to submit the acquisition to a “Road Test,” testing its characteristics in regard to aerodynamics and velocity. This slightly absurd operation is an attempt to counteract contemporary tendencies to musealize modernist design objects, and by isolating them from their initial functionalist context enforce their gradual mummification. By taking the aesthetics of flight and speed in Prouvé’s design seriously, mounting the roof as a hybrid exoskeleton on a conventional truck, and then test-driving it on an airport runway, Starling’s “Road Test” not only re-activates the fetishized design object, but also poses interesting questions in terms of authorship: the future of the piece is unclear, as is Starling’s role as an artist in this constellation.

Prouvé (Road Test) takes the aspirational nature of Prouvé’s 1950’s roof structure, Shed – a wing-like design that owes as much to aviation and automobile engineering as it does to functionalism in architecture – and puts it to the test under somewhat absurd but nevertheless fitting circumstances. Prouvé (Road Test) is in part inspired by the difficulties experienced in the 1950’s in transporting the otherwise impeccably designed prefabricated shed sections to construction sites, and involved a section of the shed system designed for the Lycée Blaise Pascal, Orsay, circa 1956, being mounted over a van, creating an aerodynamic exoskeleton, and then test driven at an airfield outside Vienna. Finally the van and its piggy-back riding, aspirational appendage will be driven into the exhibition where its ‘light-hungry,’ design, that once illuminated industrial production and education in post-war France, acquires an almost parodic relationship to the vast north-facing windows of this former sculpture studios.

Commisioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza for the exhibtion Simon Starling in collaboration with SUPERFLEX: Reprototypes, Triangulations and Road Tests

*1967 Epsom, United Kingdom | living and working in Copenhagen

Simon Starling / Prouvé (Road Test) from TBA21 on Vimeo