‘Decorative’ is a dirty word in contemporary art. It is synonymic with domesticity, with triviality. Evening-class water-colours are decorative. Cath Cookson oven mitts are decorative. Contemporary art, emphatically, should not be decorative.

Therefore, we can conclude that Marc Camillle Chaimowicz is nothing short of fearless as he delves head-first into an aesthetic comprised of rosy pastels and floral patterns and creates an exhibition of desks, booksheles, rugs and wallpaper, which never strays far from the domain of the domestic. Even more incredulous, is that he navigates this feat without a trace of either sentiment or irony. Instead, his unconventional stylistic approach succeeds in creating a multi-referential body of work, which constantly catechises what we define as art and why we do so.

Unsurprisingly for a show consisting mostly of interior furnishings, the long-held distinctions between art and craft collapse around you with a resounding clamour as you enter this exhibition. Historically, art movements which have interrogated this hegemony of Fine arts over their humbler, utilitarian counterparts have done so with a utopian agenda. Dada, Constructivism and Bauhaus, to name a few, all embraced art into the sphere of the everyday as a specific strategy of their world-changing ambition. Needless to say, they didn’t quite succeed, and thus, a century on, the old ivory tower conundrum still prevails in the contemporary art world. With his pastel-coloured quotidian artefacts, however, Chaimowicz is endeavouring to dismantle it.

From the Art Deco-esque angular planes of his bookshelves to the neon glare of his Pop Art wallpaper, Chaimowicz’s work insistently lauds a firm dialogue with art history. The temporal development of artistic styles are collapsed into one mélange of historical hybrids, which create constant conceptual paradoxes. Art historians have wrangled with the question of whether domesticity equals triviality in the context of Fine Art since the early twentieth century, a point of reference which Chaimowicz cites by including a century-old work from another great painter of domicile scenes; Eduoard Vuillard, in his show. La Chambre Rose is displaced from its traditional home in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and hung against a swathe of neon pink. The classic nineteenth-century painting is encircled by the scattered swirling patterns which comprise Chaimowicz’s joyously kitschy pop wall paper. Aesthetically, the pairing is a delight. The lively specks of Vuillard’s brushwork appear practically carbonated against their freckled pink backdrop, and the painting’s elaborately wrought frame instils a rapport with the room’s trellised ceilings. It simply makes perfect sense.

This conceptual incongruity between art history and contemporary design, the classic and the kitschy, sets the tone for this entire show, it also raises some fundamental questions of art-world hierarchy and how it developed. Vuillard, as a nineteenth century master, embodies the alienated artistic genius idea which was so dominant until the second world war. Chaimowicz, however, works a lot with craftspeople and artisans, hiring them to construct his wooden furniture, as well as endorsing Edinburgh’s local Dovecot Studios to produce a specially commissioned rug for him. This delegating creative process derides conventional notions of artistic control. Individual intentions are proved to be one small aspect of a much larger picture as the disembodied, Modernist genius is kicked out of the frame, and supplanted with am egalitarian, communal creative process instead.

Much of success of this exhibition can be attributed to the perfect coupling of Chaimowicz with this particular gallery. Usually, a contemporary art setting aspires to the White Cube ethos; a condition of absolutely unobtrusive neutrality, to function merely as a backdrop and limit any distraction from the art work itself. Inverleith House is patently the antithesis of this sort of space. Rather than posing an unassertive presence, the house, with its Georgian proportions and sweeping ceilings, is simply a metonym of stateliness. Each room is braided with the ornate trellising so typical of Edinburgh, and thus plainly proclaims its unique history and purpose as a lived-in, domestic space. In such a gallery, art is rendered defunct if it merely, passively occupies the space, but must actively seek to inhabit it; using the homely setting to add to and enhance its own potential. In Chaimowicz’s case, one could scarcely imagine a more perfect setting for his work. Walking around this exhibition, the sense of private encounter allows one to embark upon a truly personalised and sincerely intimate engagement with the artwork.

With his array of unexplained, pragmatically diurnal objects, Chaimowicz is not so much seeking to make statements with his art, as to interrogate the methods by which meaning is created. Indeed, his work shuns didacticism. When it speaks to the viewer, it is not with a flagrant assault, but with the gentlest of promptings. It steers clear of rhetorical manoeuvres, but rather, with cumulative traces and imprints, beckons to our awakening memory.

Indeed, memory, with its unstable inscriptions and tangential meanderings, is a crucial aspect of this show. This is well exemplified by the two ground floor rooms which present the inaugural 1978 work Here and There, alongside a newly commissioned piece; For I.H.. Here, the ongoing interchange between past and present re-runs from room to room in a circular dialogue. Both works share the same structural principle, they are composed of an assortment of large, free-standing panels, but have followed divergent aesthetic routes, and as such function as a pair of mis-matched but integrated artworks, which continually offset and encourage each other.

The earlier work is coloured in an impressively diverse gamut of monochrome; tones ranging from overcast ash to silverware fill the room. In contrast, For I.H. spurns this austerity, and instead, erupts in the sort of vivid pastels which could inspire a twelve-year old’s eye-shadow palette. Yet, both works herald a mutual commitment to articulating our fluctuating recollections. The panels in For I.H., for instance, are reminiscent of an 1960s textile shop, overrun, as they are, with layers of multi-coloured, repetitive motifs of broadly stylised foliage. The intention, however, is not merely the static referencing of ornament, but the eliciting of certain experiences of reality which the forms suggest. The faded patterns, sun-stained wallpaper and bygone colour schemes don’t so much prompt nostalgia, as flood the room with its outpourings.

This thread of wistful reminiscences is picked up and continued in the earlier work, which features overlaid, black and white photographs scattered amongst its panels. These glimpsed images offer us the hazy outlines of gestures, touches and glances between couples, of empty rooms and light falling against plaster walls. They comprise a compendium of almost-there encounters, an anamnesis of fragmentary moments, remaining enticingly out of reach.

Thus the two works are constantly pursuing each other in circular exchange, initiating a dialogue which resonates with the poetics of impermanence. This conversational thread is continued throughout the show, not offering us any static, demarcated experience, but, instead, a ceaseless intermingling of lived experience with the artifice of the work.

Originally published 23rd November 2010