Ole Jensen
Toilet (2006) 

What is a toilet, actually? It might be cheating to call it a vessel – in fact, it is just a pipe, made wide enough to sit on. Like a funnel that catches the turd and moves it along. The ceramic toilet was invented when cities built underground sewers, and toilets moved indoors, into the home. That was much more comfortable than the outhouse – but foul smells were an issue. It was necessary to integrate a trap, a piece of pipe where standing water forms a horizontal trap that keeps sewer smells out. 

In recent decades, the trend in toilet design has moved towards concealing the functional aspects by hiding the cistern inside the wall and making the water seal as integrated as possible, cloaking its practical purpose. The illusion of having almost magical control over the filthy mess has become increasingly complete. This illusion is brutally shattered when the toilet is clogged, but that is a different story. This tendency to render design function ’invisible’ is ubiquitous, not least in all the enigmatic screens we encounter, where manual buttons have been replaced by a smooth, black touchscreen. A frictionless, eternally weightless existence.  

Ole Jensen’s toilet enters this context as a true contrarian. The functional water trap has been enlarged and highlighted to the max – it almost plays the lead role. The toilet is an exuberant display of the joy of form, and I am reminded of the Matchbox track of my childhood, where miniature toy cars zipped round in a hazardous loop: if the cars had built up enough speed, they would come through the upside-down section unscathed – if not, they would crash to the ground. The toilet was hand-modelled, and every square centimetre bears the imprint of Ole’s fingers. An insistent demonstration that form arises in a close partnership between the imagined concept and the actions of the hands. A belief in swelling shapes and the full, carnal presence of the human body. His deliberate choice to leave the traces of the modelling process in place lends the piece a sketch-like character, as if we were looking at an idea, highlighting what I think is his true intention: insisting that design is an ongoing discussion of the world in which we walk, talk and digest. The object alternates between representing thinking and BEING present as form. Ole insists that while design may be about solving a ’problem’ it is also about having as much fun as possible while we are here. (GJ)