The white paper cut-outs are mounted on white frames and a white background, simple and clean in appearance. The thoughts and intent behind their creation is in fact the culmination of years of study and introspection.
The nine cut-outs are displayed at the Swiss Art Gate UAE exhibition, The Universe of Patterns, in the lobby of the Swiss Tower at Jumeirah Lake Towers in Dubai.
The exhibition is part of a study by the architect André Meyerhans that asks: how can we find a contemporary geometric design that reflects the modern Middle East?
“Even though I’m not Middle Eastern, I’m part of this society and I would like to contribute to it,” says Meyerhans, a Swiss national who has been based in Dubai for 12 years. “My question is, how to find a contemporary language, a modern language, one that has the zeitgeist in it.”
Meyerhans saw two possible approaches: the tangible characteristics of the culture that he found through its patterns, or intangible characteristics of social interaction, such as hospitality, that need to be translated into the tactile.
He focused on the former. The next question was how to design Islamic patterns, built on centuries of tradition, with contemporary characteristics.
Islamic geometric patterns are usually drawn around a central axis, have repetitive symmetry and display what Meyerhans calls “hierarchies” – that is, patterns within patterns, with grandiose designs being made up from minute almost endlessly repeated details.
In contrast, contemporary society has shifted away from the sort of hierarchy that is expressed in traditional designs, towards a more egalitarian and democratic, random and chaotic society – and Meyerhans attempts to express this in his own Middle Eastern geometric art.
His pieces discard the hierarchy and axis on which traditional design is based. In Meyerhans’ creations, as he says, “all elements are identical. It’s not one part is larger, one part is smaller.”
Equality is represented by using non-dominant units or patterns of the same size. Units are often in random arrangements.
Even the pieces Circles And Waves and Squares And Circles that appear to have larger patterns are made of identical curved elements.
“Here I wanted to show how you can read the structure of the pattern, how can elements be read smaller, how can elements be read bigger,” says Meyerhans. “It’s more about how you can dissect.”
One of the pieces, Dissection, has an axis but includes a small cut-out of the inverse pattern to play visually with the dominant, larger pattern. “You can read the smaller or you can read the larger,” says Meyerhans. “That helps you understand how the system is built up.”
The piece Circular Pattern is intended as a fusion between a circular, 10-sided Chinese shape and a Middle Eastern interior. “So assuming that the system is not relative for any association, how do the elements need to look that you can get an association between two different cultures?” asks Meyerhans.
Meyerhans approached some works such as Circular Pattern from an intellectual perspective. With other cut-outs he let creativity lead.
His two-dimensional art allows experimentation for what can be done on a larger scale, be it in jewellery design or architecture. “Artwork often allows me to isolate certain parameters, certain parameters that I can control, see the outcome and then know how afterwards to apply them to a larger scale.”
Meyerhans based his master plan for Al Shamkha Khaleej residential community in Abu Dhabi around the principles of Islamic pattern to create an organic design that would avoid the uniformity of a conventionally planned community.
“It’s more about how can you generate an urban space that has the characteristics of a natural urban development,” says Meyerhans. “Usually urban developments grow slightly random, chaotic, and so forth. That goes completely against how you usually would like to develop an urban structure. When you develop real estate in general you usually would like to have economy of scale.”
Using a non-uniform pattern as a base, he says, allows a community to be built with economy of scale but without the experience of repetition.
His own architectural designs are broadly based on Middle Eastern Islamic patterns, but not limited to a specific country.
“The reason why I leave it rather open is because as a foreigner or an outsider, how authentic can it be? I personally have an understanding that whatever is part of the society, whether it is permanent or temporary, contributes to the society and hence defines the culture of the society,” says Meyerhans.
As such, he hopes that these paper cut-outs – simple, white and clean – could begin a discussion on how the UAE could develop its own artistic identity that does not depend on replicating architecture lifted directly from its past or from other countries.
“I hope that the dialogue will get started on how to find a contemporary form for this region,” he says. “I believe the country here is rich enough to actually bring something out that is rooted in today’s time without always going back in architecture to wind towers or to other elements that were built in other places in the world or, as I call it, comparative architecture.”
Nor should local design rely on its association with superlatives, such as the largest or most expensive.
“Those are actually always comparative to somebody else or something else, but I believe the region here is rich enough to grow something of its own,” says Meyerhans.
“This is just an idea coming from an outsider. I hope to instigate a discussion on how something can come out here.
“Obviously you need to know the history to know where you walk,” he says. “The richness of pattern is here, so how can we translate it into something contemporary?
“Couldn’t we make something new but based on the same idea and understanding?”
The exhibition runs daily until September 21 from 10am-7pm in the lobby of Swiss Tower, Jumeirah Lakes Towers, Dubai. Visit www.swissartgateuae.com for further information
Anna Zacharias is a senior features writer for The National.
