Artist Patrick van Riemsdijk on the daybed that turns people using it into art
Creatives often talk about the blurring of boundaries between art and design. Patrick van Riemsdijk eloquently articulates the link between the two by referencing his partnership with Maxalto. “A daybed is an item of furniture that can be a piece of living art,” says the Dutch artist of the custom Lilum Dormeuse chaise longue that he has worked on with the Italian brand. “By sitting on it, you become part of the artwork.” The Mallorca-based painter was tapped by Maxalto to create a design for a limited run of 50 daybeds. It’s a collaboration that marks the Italian brand’s 50th anniversary – and its 30th under the artistic direction of Antonio Citterio. “We didn’t want to do a new product but a special version of an existing one,” says Citterio. “The concept was specific: we weren’t designing fabric first and upholstering it later. Instead the artist had to paint directly onto a beige daybed.”
And so, Van Riemsdijk did; first he draped pieces of fabric over a Lilum Dormeuse to hone his approach before finally painting broad strokes across a couch. Colour development was key. “At first I considered black but it felt too harsh,” says Van Riemsdijk. “Maxalto has a lot of earthy tones, so I shifted to a dark brown that contrasts well with the beige fabric.” The final painted daybed was then transported back to Italy, where it was used to develop a fabric that replicated the colour and stroke-weight of this base model, which has been applied to the pieces.
The result are daybeds that invite their user to engage with Van Riemsdijk’s reflection on the intersection of art and design: if one follows the brush strokes of the artist’s brush, they would find themselves in either a well-supported upright position or a leisurely laying-down pose – appropriate postures for becoming, in Van Riemsdijk’s words, a part of the art.
maxalto.com
patrickvanriemsdijk.com
