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The Rice Thresher
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Maria Stalford thresher staff
Rashid has graced our campus with his hipness thanks to the savvy and hard work of guest curator Jennifer King (Hanszen '96). King said she became interested in Rashid while researching the recent phenomenon of "good design for everyone." She spent a day dragging a few reluctant friends through New York galleries while trying to decide which artist to invite to Rice. Her friends suffered major "gallery fatigue" at the end of the day, but they came alive in a design store that carried some of Rashid's creations. Though Rashid's training is in industrial design, he prefers to think of himself an "orchestrator of the physical world." Rashid views himself as "the 'artist of real issues' of everyday life who mediates between industry and the user; between self-expression and desire, between production technologies and human social behavior, between commerce and everyday life," according to his Web site at http://www.core77.com/karimrashid. Rashid has enjoyed unrivaled success in this role. Sales of his best-known and most affordable products, the curvy plastic Garbo and Garbino trash cans for Umbra, have swelled to more than two million. His translucent OH chair and YA table, also for Umbra, seem to be approaching a similar level of ubiquity. "Pleasurscape" depicts Rashid's vision of the way we might come to conceive of and interact with our environments. The installation is a kind of prototype for a future in which objects and spaces will be intimately and indistinguishably connected. The gallery space has been transformed into a series of molded white plastic forms rising out of and into a continuous expanse of fluorescent orange. Visitors to the gallery are encouraged to remove their shoes to explore and recline in the repeating plastic landscape of chaise lounges and table-like projections. Awash in the ambient electronic music and situated in the smoothly contoured, surprisingly comfortable chaises, one can do little but follow Rashid's instructions to "kick back, relax and chill." Rashid views the space as "a part of the Pleasurnation - a place and time for Solitude, the cocoon as communal. A world that I am developing." His description makes the space sound positively blissful, but despite its alluring shapes, the undulating landscape cannot escape the hard, sterile, almost denture-like white plastic it's made of. Furthermore, the identical plastic forms are arranged in a regular, grid-like pattern that all but discourages "communal" social interaction. The wide gulf between the chaises is an obstacle to intimate conversation, and the chairs are constructed such that the most comfortable position is to look straight up at the ceiling. Rashid insists that this is intentional and that he means for visitors to have a space for solitude and meditation. Nevertheless, there seems to be a conflict between the sensuous, organic forms and their grid-like arrangement, which can suggest, in spite of itself, a hospital ward of parallel, identical beds. This points to the installation's central, if inevitable, problem. Pleasurscape is curious and fun on its own, but it is much more interesting in the context of a larger body of work and theory that lends it more revolutionary significance. It would be grossly unfair to compare the resources of our small installation space with that of a major museum or a high-profile developer, but the most complete realization of Rashid's ideas can be seen in his design of the almost impossibly chic and high-tech Semiramis Hotel in Athens and in his upcoming piece, "Softscape," for the San Francisco MOMA. Like "Pleasur-scape," "Softscape" will also be a reconfigurable interior landscape, but it will utilize softer materials and will embed the latest in digital technology into the supple forms themselves. In short, even the generous budget constraints of the Rice Gallery have limited "Pleasurscape" to more of a schematic display of Rashid's sophisticated vision of the possibilities for the physical world than a full execution of it. As manifested in "Softscape," Rashid's insatiable interest in innovative new technologies extends in numerous directions - from new plastics and coloring techniques to high-tech gadgetry and the impact it is making on our lives. Rashid tries to be on the pulse of what he calls the "infosthetic," the aesthetics of the information age. In this way, he shows an affinity with the Japanese, who have been especially enthusiastic about his work. He has designed the interior of two floors of the Sendai Mediatheque, innovative shopping bags, the first-ever designer plastic eau de toilette bottle for Issey Mikaye and an extensive line of home furnishings for IDEE Japan. For Rashid, the infosthetic catalyzes a wholly new way of looking at the material world, a philosophy he calls "growth by subtraction." He disavows society's obsession with objects and even advocates ridding one's home of all material things that fail to bring meaning and pleasure to our lives. He rejects the idea that interior designers should aim for the longevity or permanence of their ideas, contending instead that design must always stay current with or even ahead of its time. The son of a television set designer, he argues, "Interiors used to last 30 years, now they last for about three. Interior design has become like set design." Indeed, when asked after his lecture at the architecture school what kinds of objects might become heirlooms in the future, he rejects the very notion of heirlooms, adding triumphantly, "We will dematerialize eventually and throw out all this baggage!" Like any true believer, he's encountered quite a few skeptics. Rashid's radical proposals for such purveyors of cool as Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger were eventually rejected because they were just too virtual and conceptual for companies that exist based on the sales of material objects. However, the bread and butter of Rashid's meteoric rise to fame and fortune has been his uncommonly clever, innovative design of common household objects for both high- and low-end markets. Although his Soft collection of lighting for George Kovacs retails at about $1,500 a lamp and his one-off carpets and couches have commanded far more, the Garbo can and OH chairs have been selling like hotcakes for less than $10 and $50, respectively. Visiting "Pleasurscape" might whet your appetite for incorporating good design into your own life and space. Then again, chances are you just might have an array of Rashid creations in your home already - and that is exactly why "Pleasurscape" is such a major event. If you have any designs on being part of the hip and happening, you shouldn't miss it.
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