Take My Breath Away - an exhibition by Danh Vo

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LOG DOG, 2013

 

Generally, art and sculpture are not reviewed here - on a site that focuses on architecture and design - but this extensive exhibition, showing work by the artist Danh Vo from the last fifteen years, includes pieces that he has chosen from the collection of the gallery and these are presented in a way that challenges our perceptions and preconceptions and uses the architectural space extending across the lobby and the Sculpture Street of the gallery as well as the two main exhibition spaces.

Works include sculpture, furniture, Chinese pavilions in timber and artefacts including letters and photographs. It is the juxtaposition of these elements - so a television and refrigerator and a crucifix together - that tests the boundaries we impose between art works, found objects, discarded or broken art and more mundane household objects that never-the-less have strong and important personal associations.

Danh Vo was born in Vietnam in 1975 and came to Denmark with his family when he was four years old. His work explores themes of migration, colonialism and religion. In the exhibition is a chandelier that hung above the table in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs where the treaty ending the Vietnam War was signed. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art in Copenhagen and at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. 

the exhibition continues at Statens Museum for Kunst until 2 December 2018

 
 

Chinese pavilions - the pavilion in the middle lobby area with the bronze sculpture It’s Just Not a Waiting Room by Danh Vo from 2013 and the pavilion in the north exhibition hall with commercial shelving used to display some of the works

 
 
 

Sculpture Street with statues from the Royal Cast Collection shown in groups and set on wooden pallets

 
 

GUSTAV’S WING, 2013
Bronze from Pinault Collection

MA TI LONG, 2016
Bamboo bird cage on Roman Corinthian column

UNTITLED, 2018
Roman torso of Venus in marble

 

03.01.1752, 2015
German porcelain recovered from the wreck of the trading ship Geldermalsen that sunk in the South China Sea
Set on a sandstone eagle

08.03, 28.05, 2009
Chandelier from the Hotel Majestic in Paris from above a table where the Paris Peace Accord was signed

 

Practice Futures

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A major exhibition, Practice Futures, has opened at KADK - the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation.

The full title of the exhibition is Technology in Architecture, Practice Future, Building Design for a New Material Age, and this is an import examination of that area, if you see it in terms of a Venn Diagram, where the disciplines or professional expertise of architecture, engineering, techniques of construction and the development and the technology of materials meet and overlap.

Fifteen research projects are presented here from international PhD students working in six major European research departments and working with fourteen established partners including major architectural practices, engineering companies and construction companies.

These ongoing studies are reassessing well-established materials such as timber and concrete and rediscovering or reassessing or developing techniques to shape, bend, finish and join materials to achieve new forms of construction such as large scale, computer-controlled extrusion or printing and the development of new materials for large-scale building projects. 

This is about new tools and new approaches for reassessing traditional materials and established craft techniques but also about using computers to assess complex information; to solve unconventional design problems and to control systems for constructing new forms and new types of building. 

Projects presented here are prototypes to demonstrate customised solutions to realise challenging new construction projects that not only have to take into account the need for high energy conservation but also have to tackle rapidly-developing problems or social pressures from population growth, and, as a direct consequence, find new solutions to the demands of cities that are growing at an unprecedented speed. This is construction design trying to deal with political and economic constraints and with the added and pressing demands of global climate change.

KADK Udstillingen og Festsalen
Danneskiold-Samsøes Allé 51-53
1435 København K

the exhibition continues until 7 December 2018

 

umsicht regards sguardi 17 - SIA at Design Werck

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An exhibition has opened at Design Werck in Copenhagen to show major engineering and design projects that were selected for their annual award in 2017 by SIA … the Schweizerischer Ingenieur- und Architektenverein or the Swiss association of engineers and architects.

“The SIA invited architects, engineers, public authorities, companies, investors, and private and public developers to submit projects covering schemes of any size. Each project was then judged on the design’s response to its environment and on the way it applied solutions that would meet users’ needs in an exemplary or novel way.”

Six projects received awards and two others were given honourable mentions for their pioneering roles in designing evolutionary living spaces and their contribution to the sustainability of Switzerland’s built environment

Photographs are by Beat Schweizer and films are by Marc Schwartz.


The exhibition continues at Design WERCK until 7 October 2018

 

CHART ART FAIR 2018

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Education Chair no. 2 by Daniel Svarre 2018
SPECTA

 

The annual Autumn fair in Copenhagen for contemporary art opened on Friday 31 August and then continues through the 1 and 2 September. CHART celebrates “Copenhagen’s tradition of art, design and architecture, and its values of liveability and inclusion.”

The main venue - with 32 galleries from the Nordic region participating to show paintings, drawings, sculpture and photography - is in the rooms on the first floor at Kunsthal Charlottenborg … the home of The Royal Danish Academy of Art on Kongens Nytorv .

Over the weekend there are also many events including CHART FILMS, CHART TALKS and CHART PERFORMANCES and CHART MUSIC.

Kunsthal Charlottenborg

CHART

 

CHART Architecture - the Pavilions

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FRAME
designed by Malte Harrig, Karsten Bjerre and Katrine Hoff

 

In the two large courtyards of Kunsthal Charlottenborg are five pavilions … the setting for what is called CHART SOCIAL.

These pavilions or CHART ARCHITECTURE are the winning designs from an open competition held earlier in the year for young architects and architecture and design students.

 

 

OPEN RESOURCE
by Dennis Andersson, Mikkel Roesdahl and Xan Browne

THE MANY CHAIRS PAVILION
by Sofia Luna Steenholdt, Joachim Makholm Michelsen, Emil Bruun Meyer and Casper Philip Ebbesen

TIGHT KNIT
designed by Jan Sienkiewicz

SUM OF US: A CLOUD OF HUMAN EMOTION
designed by Sean Lyon in collaboration with Space 10

 

CHART DESIGN 2018

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This is the sixth ‘edition’ of CHART but, for the first time, there is also a CHART Design Fair at the gallery of Den Frie on Oslo Plads in Østerport where twelve galleries from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden are showing furniture and contemporary glass and ceramics.

In the basement gallery at Den Frie is an installation by benandsebastian entitled Department of Voids … a space in two halves divided by a glass wall with the two parts mirrored … one with empty museum storage cases and the answering part beyond the glass with the objects reimagined and in glass.

Den Frie
benandsebastian

an exhibition to mark 100 years of political cartoons in Denmark

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Bring up the subject of design and politics in a conversation and most people would assume that you are going to launch into a complaint about cuts in funding for teaching design or to talk about the depressing reality of how little art is commissioned by so many governments set against how much dubious art is commissioned by too many despots.

But design has always had a part to play in political life - even if it is only that each party ends up being identified by a specific colour and tries to use an appropriate and easily identified style in their graphics. I'm amazed by just how many posters appear on bridge parapets, trees and lamp posts here during an election and you quickly spot which belongs to which party.

At the moment - in front of the parliament building in Copenhagen - there is an outdoor exhibition to mark 100 years of political cartoons in Denmark and it demonstrates a surprising willingness by politicians to show, on their front step, how the popular papers saw and depicted their predecessors and how cartoonists saw and interpreted major events.

 
 

Posters from Paris in May 1968

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In May 1968 there were demonstrations, street protests and the occupation of buildings by students along with major strikes by workers' against capitalism, against consumerism and against American imperialism. It built up to a general strike by over 9 million workers on 23 May 1968 and, as a consequence, President de Gaulle dissolved parliament and called a general election.

The Academy of Art, at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, was occupied by students and the studios there became the Atelier Populaire or 'people's workshop' for the collective production of politically critical posters.

Most of the posters were printed in a single colour and many screen printed, with a quick turnaround as the situation changed or because students had to replace posters that had been torn down. Some newspapers that had been closed down even donated stocks of their paper but, where necessary, a new poster could be printed on the back of an earlier poster.

In 1971, Designmuseum Danmark, with a grant from the New Carlsberg Foundation, purchased 250 of the posters that had been produced by the Atelier in the short period before it was shut down by the police.

A small exhibition at Designmuseum Danmark shows a selection of these posters to mark the 50th anniversary of those events in France.

Designmuseum Danmark

 

Løsninger - exhibition of work by graduates from the School of Architecture, Design and Conservation

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There are just a few more days to see the work of the 232 architects and designers who graduated this summer from the schools of architecture and design at Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademis Skoler for Arkitektur, Design og Konservering - KADK or the Danish Royal Academy of Architecture, Design and Conservation.

 

the exhibition is open every day to the 19 August 2018
KADK
Udstillingen og Festsalen
Danneskiold-Samsøes Allé 51-53

Flammespor / Scorched traces - ceramics by Charlotte Nielsen

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Ceramic works by Charlotte Nielsen that are fired using raku techniques that traditionally means rapid firing at a high temperature and rapid cooling so the fired clay takes on the colours and the sharp look of weathered and rusted iron. These incredible pieces are inspired by ironwork with ribs and spirals that make the pieces look like worn machine parts. 

 

Officinet
Danske Kunsthåndværkere & Deignere
Bredgade 66
14 July until 18 August 2018