Four Rooms: entering a shop, looking at a theatre

In 1984, the Liberty store in London becomes the setting for Four Rooms. Michael Regan invites four artists, including Anthony Caro and Richard Hamilton, to devise proposals. Marc Camille Chaimowicz prepares an interior whose theatrical character is emphasised by the MAMC+ guide. Visitors view it from a distance. This situation distinguishes the ensemble from an apartment open to free circulation or a space where the artist welcomes his audience directly. The place seems to propose a dwelling, but this dwelling presents itself as a stage.

The commission in a store is particularly fruitful for an artist attentive to furniture and decorative arts. Commerce presents objects intended for private life every day. Chaimowicz takes this proximity seriously while shifting it. Furniture no longer merely shows what could be bought or used. It participates in a composition we contemplate. The building’s commercial destination remains a real context; the work introduces another relationship between objects and people passing before them.

The exhibition guide describes an ensemble of furniture in grey and blue tones. It mentions Desk On Decline, a tilted desk, as well as a console with sharp lines, a pyramidal form and a light fitting by Eileen Gray. We can follow these elements without inventing an occupant. Bringing them together produces coherence of presentation, but their use is not necessarily ordinary. The desk attracts attention precisely because its position unsettles the expectation associated with its name. Familiar furniture acquires a presence exceeding its usual function.

A curved screen pierced by three openings allows us, according to the guide, to look from one side to the other. This possibility creates circulation of the gaze where a screen would normally separate or conceal. The object maintains a division while making it traversable. It illustrates the ensemble’s logic well: an interior’s elements are recognisable, but the relationships they propose are shifted. We believe we know what furniture is for, then its form invites us to consider another experience.

Four Rooms also includes a photographic presence. Rachel and Graham are associated with a series of thirty-six slides showing figures in the setting. The guide presents this work as a way of animating the interior. We must not turn these images into evidence of real everyday life in the store. They belong to the construction of the scene. The people photographed nevertheless add a human dimension: an ensemble of objects becomes a possible environment, and that possibility can be recounted through attitudes rather than a long action.

Viewing from a distance changes the audience’s role. We are not required to try a seat or open storage to take part in the work. Our participation passes through projection. We compare forms, recognise uses and observe their deviations. The scene does not recount a specific day. It offers an interior whose coherence rests on relationships between colours, volumes and openings. The absence of an imposed story leaves viewers room to assess what the objects suggest to them.

The presentation of Four Rooms in the MAMC+ documents of 2022 allows this experience of 1984 to be revisited. Store and museum do not provide the same framework, but the work retains its central question: how can an interior become a form of looking? Chaimowicz composes with things we are accustomed to asking for a service. He also asks them to produce an image. Domestic theatre arises in this gap. Its presentation maintains a useful distance: the room can be desired as a place of life while remaining offered as a spectacle. We remain before a recognisable space, yet the furniture seems to teach us to look differently at what we simply call a room.