In the course of Vienna Design Week, directed by Lilli Hollein, Tulga Beyerle and Thomas Geisler, Harald Bichler, founder of Rauminhalt, invites an artist for the third consecutive year to relate between design and contemporary art. After a monumental installation by Daniel Spoerri in 2008 and after having given free disposition to Rudi Molacek in 2009 who, among others, presented Martin Kippenberger, Meret Oppenheim, Gerwald Rockenschaub, it is up to French artist Laurent Ajina to occupy the gallery. With Black Intervening Object, Ajina creates a surprising encounter between modern design and contemporary art. The artist has selected a series of exceptional objects covering more than a century, chosen for their esthetic quality, their functionality and enigmatic character. This is how signed pieces by Charlotte Perriand, Serge Mouille or Zaha Hadid become an integral part of the installation, here by losing their utility, immerged in a union, as improbable as necessary, but always provisional.

A reconstructor of space, Laurent Ajina occupies the territory in a creative deracination of his own environment. The artist treats architecture pictorially by displaying architectonic figures to bring out a new value in urban spaces. In this process, the place acts as a trigger, with the artist finding a different, unpredictable and precarious continuity, transposed into installations in-situ combining monumental drawings and video.

Laurent Ajina lives and works between Vienna and Paris, he is currently an artist in residence at the CENTQUATRE, a major cultural institution in Paris, France.