Power Plant 01

Year: 2011
Limited edition: 5 + 2 artist’s proofs
Dimensions: 100 cm x 80 cm x 115 cm
Materials: Maple, steel, glass, linoleum,
Photography: Raw Color

Power plant 01  is part of a series of remarkable installations by Studio Mieke Meijer. The installations are inspired by the photographs of Bernd and Hilla Becher and other imagery of industrial architecture.

The black and white images of the photographers couple are best known for their ‘typologies’- grids of black-and-white photographs of variant examples of a single type of industrial structure.

Since 1959, Bernd and Hilla Becher have been tracing the man-made testimonies to the industrial era in Germany, Holland, France, Belgium, Great Britain and the United States and document both the production plants and the houses in these industrial areas in photographs.

Industrial buildings are a remarkable building type. The architectural shape is completely functionality based. In the 20th century, most of these buildings were taken down because they had served their purpose and were no longer a tenable economic proposition. That’s why the photographs of Bernd & Hilla Becher remain the only visual record of these ‘anonymous’ structures.

Studio Mieke Meijer restores these disused industrial shapes into functional installations which enable studying, collecting and storing. Each piece is hand made to her own interpretation with outstanding attention to industrial details and skilled craftsmanship. The titles of the installations refer to their original function.

Unlike the first two installation of the series, Power plant 01 wasn’t based on a Becher photograph but on a marquant Eindhoven building, heritage from the Philips company. Studio Mieke Meijer translated it into a low table with two conical shaped lamps.