[ Arne Quinze for Louis Vuitton ] The Traveller

The Traveller, an installation by Belgian artist/designer Arne Quinze, opened in Munich, Germany last month.

The installation marked the opening of a new Louis Vuitton store within the Oberpollinger department store in the city.

Here’s some text from Louis Vuitton:

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Louis Vuitton pays tribute to famous artist Arne Quinze and collaborate with him to celebrate the opening of its new store at Oberpollinger

From 1874, twenty years after its creation, Louis Vuitton establishes close relationships with the contemporary art. The privileged links which the Louis Vuitton House maintains with the painting, the decorative arts and the design emanate from a desire always renewed by modernity and by creativity.

It became therefore very natural for Louis Vuitton to invite Arne Quinze to celebrate the opening of its new store at Oberpollinger and to collaborate with such a prolific artist, whose talent lies in his ability to fuse polar extremes – passion and chaos with controlled elegance. He masterfully creates immaculate, urbane and polished designs that are balanced with a certain contradicting tension, giving them a refined yet exuberant appearance. He realises his ideas with extraordinary verve and is able to apply them to projects of any scale, whether it be architecture, interior design or urban planning.

The “city lover” shows a genuine interest for outstanding architecture creation. He even dreams of creating his own city and no challenge is too great for Quinze. People can still visit his Cityscape, a giant sculpture, frantically built from nothing more than wooden slats and nails, which is breathing new life into the centre of Brussels elaborated in 2007.

On 12th November 2008, Arne Quinze created a fantastic sculpture, a 20m high and 12m wide wooden architectural construction called “The Traveller” displayed at the occasion of the opening of the new Louis Vuitton store in Munich, and until beginning of January 2009. Quinze invite us to a journey, an enigmatic travel through this masterpiece of which roads leads us to a world of emotion and inspiration. “Travelling means discovering new things, seeing new cultures, come across new aspects of life. I travel constantly and I consider it as enrichment for my evolution as a human being. Travelling equals to inspiration,” declares Arne Quinze.

Quinze also revealed another new sculpture, 80 meter long and 15 meter high, in Brussels on 16 November 2008, and staying for 5 years. ‘The Sequence’ connects the Flemish Parliament with the House of Flemish Representatives, bridging the communication gap between people and generating movement in the city. The symbolic and physical connection between the neighbors, the Flemish Parliament and the House of Flemish Representatives, reflects a possible connection between all people in Brussels. Cross-culture connections, a connection with Europe, its diversity and entity.