Never intended to find temporary comfort in one fixed location, only to be visually “savoured” by the passerby, these translucent hybrid installations are designed for a short-term inhabitation, one that invariably provides a prolonged unpretentious interplay with their beholders. One could say that Plastique Fantastique’s practice is rather more a practice of space, whereby their installations produce a counter, dreamlike, spatial experience that transgresses the characteristics of the city, as we think we know it. Just like invasive organisms, their artworks disrupt the squared, regulated urban grid, as they occupy this intermediate zone, allowing prefabricated spaces to be used in a myriad of ways by drawing undefined trajectories and devious routes within the established configuration of our cityscapes.

Whether functioning as a polyurethane sculptural shell designed to host concerts and performances (LOUD SHADOWS | LIQUID EVENTS, Terschelling 2017, #StayOut, Terschelling 2022) or simply playfully craving for human interaction, Marco Canevacci and Yena Young’s creations are always comprised of plastic fantastic curves. The ethereal membrane they are made of gives prominence to their haptic properties while in some projects (SOUND OF LIGHT, Hamm 2014; DOUBLE HEART, different locations since 2017) it even breathes and pulsates due to audio frequencies. While their transparency may, at first glance, point directly to the modernist movement and the demand for open spaces and glass constructions to erase the dark historical past from the new metropolis once and for all, Plastique Fantastique’s quest is more notably about blending between the surrounding environment and the interior of their structures, thereby fusing the sense of what is public and private together.

But, at this point, let’s stick to the duo’s most representative pneumatic structure: the bubble. In the introduction to the first of his three-volume work, Spheres (1998 – 2004), Peter Sloterdjik (German contemporary philosopher and cultural theorist) makes a clear connection between solidarity/love, the sphere/bubble, and life itself. In his view, existence is directly linked to the formation of the sphere (the world is nothing but the soap bubble of an all-encompassing breath). The bubble is nothing more than the intimate micro-unit and the basic molecule of every act of solidarity, and such is the relationship between the blower and his/her soap bubble, namely one of total exclusivity.

Looking back to 1999, when Marco Canevacci first experimented with his DIY bubbles to create small heated units inside a cold abandoned factory in Friedrichshain (Berlin), the particular bond between the blower and the object of his desire (the bubble), which Sloterdjik describes, was already well established. Beginning their existence as functional indoor objects, Plastique Fantastique’s bubbles turned into fleeting, lightweight monuments, popping up like blisters in and around the city, carrying along with them a sense of a strange yet familiar Utopianism, inspired by the 90s Berlin techno scene, conjuring a connection to Constant Nieuwenhuys’ New Babylon and Etienne-Louis Boullée’s vision of an ideal city.

Plastique Fantastique’s inflatable spheres give themselves up to a ceaseless vagabondage. Their precursors can be found in the flying saucers of Ed Wood’s films as well as at the base on Zero island featured in the Colonel Bleep animated TV series, Coop Himmel(b)lau’s Heart Space-Astro Ballon and Wallace Neff’s Airform bubble houses. They could also have originated in the homo bulla of the northern Baroque vanitas and the transparent balloon shaped forms that encapsulate the lovers depicted in Hieronymous Bosch’s triptych The Garden of Earthly Desires… leading them where else? But to a special heavenly place made from different bubble constellations (M. Canevacci).

Some of Plastique Fantastique’s latest projects include: RUNNING HEARTS, a variation of DOUBLE HEART at the Piknic Gallery in Seoul (March - July 2024), PLANETARIUM in collaboration with Labo.Art during Milan Design Week (April 2024) and the brand new project THE BLACK BIRD AND THE CANARY at the C-Mine Cultural Space in Genk, Belgium, during the upcoming exhibition Any Ways the Wind Blows (the opening is on June 22, 2024) consisting of two relevant, yet contrasting bubble installations that aim to interweave both a tranquil, immersive environment echoing heavenly warbles and its opposite, a disordering industrial setting that reverberates the disturbing sounds of machinery. No matter the particular theme, Plastique Fantastique’s (in)visible installations never fail to engage with their audience, testing the limits of our senses, in what is a testament to the duo’s boundless imagination, conceptual prowess and technological explorations.

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About our guest contributor Matina Charalambi

Matina Charalambi lives and works in Athens. She is an art theorist and independent curator and also a member of the AICA (International Association of Art Critics). She studied Archaeology and History of Art at the National Kapodistrian University of Athens and continued her studies at the School of Architecture N.T.U.A (MA Architectural Design - Space – Culture). She currently collaborates with Snehta Residency Organisation in Athens.