Two-Face Furniture
The former USSR naval base Karosta and its abandoned and decaying buildings are fuelling a vibrant art community as well as increasing tourism. Two-Face Furniture rethinks Karosta’s new urban furniture – bus stops, seating modules, playgrounds and info posts - as objects that frame views in surprising ways. The sightline of each view – whether it is pointing to an insignificant house or the grand cathedral – becomes the basis of a projection that hollows out a volume. Each piece of furniture houses two material worlds, separated through distinctions between outside and inside and/or front side and backside. On one side, mitered corners and reflective paint hide material thicknesses and tectonics and foreground form. On the other side, surfaces are braced and subdivided by a grid, working as an armature for a heterogeneous mix of cement and ballast, creating an intense materiality. Together, these two material worlds begin to forge relationships with Karosta’s own – from the shiny cupolas of the cathedral, to the eroded remains of naval bunkers and the modular facades of blockhouses.
