He makes furniture and lamps, but became known to a wider audience with his artful toy cars and, in recent years, with his colorful fantasy cities. In an extensive retrospective, the Drents Museum shows that this serious designer has always kept playing. Welcome to ‘The world of Floris Hovers’.
,,Can I have an autograph?” As soon as visitors realize that the artist is walking around in his own exhibition, they want to share their enthusiasm with him. ,,What a beautiful exhibition”, remark two cheerful ladies. ,,As soon as you enter the room, all those colors and shapes make you happy,” says one. And then those old toys. It reminds me of Meccano and Lego from the past”, the other points to a cupboard full of sources of inspiration for artist Floris Hovers. ,,We may have forgotten how to play”, he responds in a conversation with them. ,,But when you play, you forget yourself and you are in a different world for a while.”
Crafts in the factory hall
For Hovers (1976) it all started in the large hall in Raamsdonksveer, where his grandfather had a concrete factory and his father later produced prefab floors. “I was always doing carpentry or tinkering. Or else build a hut outside. We often played outside and made a lot of things ourselves.” The step to study architecture seemed logical, but Hovers felt out of place there. He switched to an education for advertising and decoration. ,,There I could do much more with my creativity.” After this he studied at the Design Academy Eindhoven.
The exhibition includes his graduation work, such as a wooden chair in which all parts are held together by a stretched rope. There is no screw or nail involved. ,,It is ‘piece of wood’: simple and effective. You can see exactly how the construction works.” This also applies to other designs that Hovers has made, such as the ‘Stoklamp’: the electric wire runs clearly visible through a slot in the wooden stick between the foot and the lampshade.
Durable
Floris Hovers became known for his toy cars, such as the ArcheToys. They are made of hollow steel profiles: remnants of chair frames, for example. Then wooden vehicles followed. Here too, the simplicity and the archetypal models, as the name says, are striking. “I collect toys from former Eastern Europe. Those shapes appeal to me. At that time they did not have all kinds of materials there and they made things with what was available. At the same time, it was also ‘sustainable’, long before the word was invented. Take the Trabant; that little car we used to laugh about. But if there was something wrong with it, you could fix it yourself, or else your neighbor could. Simple and efficient.”
Hovers also works, consciously or not, on the basis of a sustainability principle. Because many of his works, such as the ‘cities’ he creates nowadays, consist of waste wood and other remnants. Take, for example, something like honeycomb cardboard, which he receives as packaging material: “When I see such material with such a window pattern, I immediately think of flats or offices.” Perfectly painted, they look modern and super sleek. Hovers turns them into complete skylines, which have recently also been given a ‘reflection’, as if they were standing on the water.
Sketches and other experiments
Today Hovers has his studio in the same former concrete factory of his father and grandfather. He’s still tinkering there. ,,I’m not into sketching or working out on the computer. The studio is a ‘work’ place: I get to work right away. And by doing and trying something is created.” The exhibition also includes a section with his ‘sketches’: small scale models and study objects made of cardboard, wood, fabric and wire.
He was already introduced to this ‘do’ method during his internship at Piet Hein Eek, known for furniture made from waste wood, which certainly influenced Hovers. Another source of inspiration is a nativity scene with figures and a set of animals in rectangular blocks. It immediately evokes associations with art movements such as De Stijl and Bauhaus. ,,Of course. I like that clarity and bringing it back to the essence.” He is less fond of their use of purely primary colours. “Color is very important to me. Together with shape, proportions and composition I ‘compose’ my objects, as it were,” says Hovers, who is also active as a musician.
As a maker of furniture and designer toys, is he more of a designer than an artist? ,,I notice that working autonomously gives me more and more satisfaction”, answers Hoving. “It brings you closer to who you are. And new products automatically emerge from that creative process.”
Do not touch, but still build yourself
It is tempting to touch all those playful objects in different materials and fabrics. But that is of course not the intention in a museum. The only object that may be touched in the exhibition is a bench on which you can sit and quietly view the large ‘city’ of about twenty square meters. There is not a person or car in sight. Yet it is a lively whole with a cacophony of colors. Is that a Ferris wheel and are they building that crane over there? Is that the subway and then a factory there? A floor full of colored blocks stimulates the imagination.
And for those who really can’t resist the temptation, there is a large table in the entrance hall with a huge stock of blocks, with which every visitor can get to work and lose themselves in their own fantasy world.
Exhibition
‘The world of Floris Hovers’, until 13 August in the Drents Museum, Brink 1, Assen. Open: Tues-Sun 10-5; until 3 September also open on Mondays.