Bagsider / Flip Sides

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For the Golden Days Festival this year the theme was The B-sides of History so, for this exhibition, the curators at Statens Museum for Kunst took that literally and present the backs of paintings and drawings in their collection.

And it is fascinating.

The exhibition is relatively small and shown in an almost-square gallery space just off the Sculpture Street with views out over the park so there is pleasant natural light and it is well worth spending time here to look at the works and read the well-written and thought-provoking labels and information panels. 

A number of paintings and drawings are shown in double-sided display cases - so that you can examine both sides - but most are turned face to the wall and they are grouped under four themes:

  • process, technique and conservation

  • recycling

  • back or front?

  • traces and signs

The first group looks at materials used to make a work of art and it is fascinating to see how considerable craftsmanship went into producing the ground for the painting or drawing particularly for paintings here on panels or on planks of wood but there are also examples of important studio techniques like pricking holes in an initial drawing so that pounce or black powder could be used to either transfer the outline or to reverse the image.

Several works show how a drawing or painting could be abandoned and the other side used for a different work.

In a few examples the view of the back shows that both sides of a work were in fact to be seen - particularly for doors that covered an altarpiece that would have an image to be seen when the door was closed and a second image that was revealed when the door was open and it flanked the main central panel. However several works play clever games with that idea so a work by Cornelis Gijsbrecht is the solid door of a cabinet but painted as if it was glazed and with the contents of the cupboard as an image and with some items painted as if they were stuck to the inside of the glass. The back of the door has a painting of the back of what was stuck to the glass. One work, also by Gijsbrecht, shows what appears to be the back of a unpainted wooden frame held with wooden pegs and with nails and the back of the canvas but the whole thing is painted.

For the social historian or simply for anyone curious about how paintings can be dated and their attribution confirmed, then the back of a painting can reveal huge amounts of evidence from plausible to incongruous techniques that do or don’t tally with what the painting on the front is telling us to makers labels for the panels or canvases the artists bought ready made to the labels from auctions or the labels and notes pasted on the back by collectors or by galleries.  

the exhibition continues at Statens Museum for Kunst until 10 March 2019

 

The reverse of a Dutch painting - a half-length portrait of an old man painted in the late 17th century on two planks of oak. The planks include sapwood, which is unusual and the curators conclude this suggests the at the panel was not of the highest quality. Note how the edges are bevelled to hold the panel in slots on the inner edge of the frame.

If a work is to go to an exhibition with several venues so might need a more controlled environment, then the gallery produces special frames where the work is sealed in a ‘micro climate’.

A painting of Board Game Players by Pieter SymonszPotter (1597/1600-1652). On the back is a drawing of a castle or manor house and the seal of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf with the name of the artist.

Labels on the back record that the painting by Carpeaux was shown in exhibitions at the Petit Palais in Paris and the Musees de Nice.

The label on the back shows that A View from the Temple of Athena on the Acropolis from 1844 was painted by Rørbye on millboard from Robert Davy, a London frame maker and restorer, but as Rørbye is not known to have visited London then the board may have been bought from a foreign dealer and possibly while he was travelling.

A trompe l’oeil by the Flemish painter Cornelis Gijsbrecht with what appears to be a canvas in a frame but all painted.

Painting of working horses cut down and used for a new work.

Untitled work from 1945 by Asger Jorn (1914-1973) The artist had returned from Paris and his style of work was going through a period of transition so, in effect, abandoning a work to paint a new work on the back might be seen to reflect this. The photograph on the left shows the painting on the front.

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

Mindcraft16

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This exhibition was shown first in Milan in April 2016 as one of the events of the annual design week in the city. As with the comparable exhibition last year - Mindcraft15 - it was curated and the display was designed by GamFratesi - the Danish Italian design partnership of Stine Gam and Enrico Fratesi. It was organised by the Danish Arts Foundation and the Agency for Culture and Palaces.

There are works here from 17 designers or design studios and the pieces demonstrate not only a very high level of craftsmanship but the works in different ways explore boundaries we seem to impose between craftsmanship and product design and art. Materials include ceramic and wood and textiles but there is also a light installation and music.

The main theme is the imagination and the intellectual process of design - that balance between understanding the materials and the techniques to be used but then wanting to push boundaries - to question, to inform, extend and develop ideas and challenge our preconceptions about how something should look and question what we want and why and how we value art and craft works and how we use objects. It’s about alternatives and discovering new possibilities.  

Gam and Fratesi suggest that the display of the pieces on revolving stands represents exploring the idea itself … from that moment of conception and how a design evolves first in the imagination and then through a number of stages. In part, the stands represent the different areas of the brain thought to be responsible for that process but also by turning they set up different views of each piece and different relationships between one piece and the next to stimulate an interaction.

There is a short introduction in the catalogue by Tor Nørretranders who has written on human consciousness and about how we make sense of the world around us. He makes an important point about the relative roles of the subconscious and the conscious part of the mind in the process of making anything so how both instinct and reasoning are used in that sequence of designing and then making. 

He also makes a link that I had not thought about before … in talking to the visitor, he suggests that when looking at and appreciating a piece it is important to "Thrust your immediate intuition, your like or dislike, your non-conscious, hands-on direct experience."

Surely that is also what the maker does, literally with hands on, during the process of throwing a pot or blowing molten glass or cutting into wood with a chisel or when selecting the right glaze or exactly the right colour for a particular thread … and that is they are making an assessment or a value judgement, part instinct, part training and part experience, part broader knowledge of materials or historic context, to decide what looks right and what feels right for what they 'had in mind' … or what they designed or planned or had drawn before they started to make.

Maybe that is why a work by a craftsman, the maker, is generally more highly valued than anything made by a machine - not so much that it is unique but that each piece is the product of continual checks and balances and decisions through the process of production. 

 

Mindcraft16 continues at Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen until 8th January 2017

 

deal with it by Rosa Tolnov Clausen

 

work in silver by Yuki Ferdinandsen

 

Den Nya Kartan - Form Design Center Malmö

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An initial report by Jenny Nordberg, begun in 2013 and completed through 2014, looked at how small-scale production of furniture, ‘gadgets’ and other design objects could be part of a sustainable community within Skåne, a clearly defined and relatively small region. The report considered ethical values in consumption and looked generally at production and at manufacturing skills surviving in southern Sweden. In part it seems to have followed a growing desire that more food should be produced locally. 

One aim of the consequent project is to reduce transport costs for both materials and for finished goods but also it was hoped that focusing design and production locally would also mean that there would be fewer intermediaries in the commercial chain. 

Early in 2015 twenty-four designers were selected along with twenty-four manufacturers to collaborate in the project. They were chosen in part for their curiosity about the project but also for their openness to trying new business partnerships.

Many of the designers had worked both locally and internationally and the manufacturers ranged in scale from craftsmen, who are generally geared up to small production runs, to companies organised for larger-scale production. Each partnership was given freedom to determine what they would produce and how and much came down to developing personal as well as working relationships.

This project has also been about testing the form of collaboration, between designer and manufacturer, and aimed to establish a more equitable financial arrangement that moved away from the normal pattern of royalties for rights to reproduce a design to agreements where the designers and manufacturers share the expenses incurred in development and initial production but then also share the revenue.

Items or objects produced through the project cover a wide range of materials and manufacturing techniques including blown glass, ceramics, metal work, leather work and textiles and a wide range of items from stacking boxes to storage jars to lighting to jewellery and a champagne table.

That last item emphasises one curious aspect of the works presented. It would appear from the introduction to the exhibition that the designers and manufacturers were given freedom to choose what they would produce. Jenny Nordberg, who also curated the exhibition, commented on this:

“As a curator, I imagined that most people would design and produce saleable inexpensive items to show that it actually does not need to be particularly expensive by local production. There, I thought wrong. It has instead been mostly projects where both designers and manufacturers wanted to challenge themselves and show the breadth of their skills. Many of the projects … are unique, conceptual, luxurious, on the verge of unfeasible and overall, just amazing.”

 

Biophillia - Stoft & Zol Art

Unisex-kimono-kofta - Liv Andersson & Biommiga Gredelina

Vaporware Fluid

Andréson & Leibel och Humi-Glas (samt JFKemi)

SpegelrörPetra Lilja & Wallåkra Stenkårlsfabrik

Spegelrör

Petra Lilja & Wallåkra Stenkårlsfabrik

Transformer

Milan Kosovic & Thomas Alexandrsson

Stilleben

Sophia Lithell & Herman Andersson Plåt

1L=

Patrik Bengtsson & Genarps Lådfabrik

 

It is not clear if this shows that designers or manufacturers were concerned primarily to showcase their skills but that seems unlikely given the well-established careers and reputations of most. Possibly they wanted to use the opportunity to produce things they would not normally be able to work on. It could be more of a problem, in terms of ongoing viability and the possibility of extending the project, if they all felt that reasonable financial returns would only be possible through producing more expensive items or if they thought that their potential market would not be interested in buying just basic items. Perhaps it is simply that, at this initial stage in this project, more basic designs - so everyday household items such as tableware - actually need a much larger production run to return a profit.

 

All the designs are available through the web site.

the exhibition continues at Form Design Center in Malmö
until the 15th November and then transfers first
to the National Museum in Stockholm and then in 2016 to Vandalorum in Värnamo.

Den Nya Kartan - The New Map

Hjemlighed .... homeliness

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Ten designers, architects and craftsmen have come together to exhibit their work in a private apartment in Lavendelstræde - a street in a tightly built up area of historic buildings just to the east of the city hall in the centre of Copenhagen.

It is an amazing apartment spread over two upper floors and the attic space of the tall, narrow 18th-century house with a striking mixture of original parts, including the roof structure, but with modern features such as an open metal staircase, a long wall of modern kitchen units and an area of glass floor between the attic bedroom and the kitchen and dining room on the level below.

The kitchen area opens onto a large roof terrace with views over the Copenhagen skyline looking towards the tower of Vor Frue Kirke. 

 

 
 

 

This is not just a chance to see a very striking apartment but, of course, to see the works displayed in a home, in the rooms of the apartment, along with books and furniture and kitchenware of a very real domestic setting.

Perhaps we have created false divisions between craftwork, such as tableware, that we can use in our homes, and the works of artists working in the crafts that we see as gallery pieces. These works, in this exhibition, were not, specifically, designed and made to be contained in an art gallery or museum - although many of these artists have their works in museum collections - but they can and should be seen and appreciated in a home. These pieces stimulate comment, attract admiration, stimulate discussion, stir people to decide if they love, like or even dislike the pieces. Owning and enjoying original art and craft pieces is not exclusively the prerogative of the public gallery or the private wealthy collector but original works of art or of craftsmanship really do have a place enhancing our lives in our homes.

Works shown here range from ceramic multiples through printed cotton squares displayed on a clothes drier on the roof terrace, to a bench in smoked oak supported on upturned stoneware vessels and there are monumental architectural urns in stoneware. Porcelain lights over the main table are a homage to the iconic Danish PH lights and striking jewellery in braided or plaited white plastic beads, forming deep ruffs for the wrist or ankle but set in a framework of a house, reflect the title of the exhibition. The one odd work, and only odd because it was large and set diagonally it fills and dominates the space of the bathroom it is displayed in, is a long narrow glass case with an arrangement of single socks with no pair.

This piece, Finds by Morten Sørensen, illustrates really well one very important role of art which is to point out or isolate something that either we have not thought about or points out an absurdity or a universal experience that we rarely even think about. Other works show how artists experiment with materials and forms pushing boundaries that really should not be there and multiple works are a really good way of emphasising subtle differences or step changes or variations.

toPHøj in porcelain by Anne Tophøj

Indretning in stoneware by Marianne Nielsen and Kristine Tillge Lund

 
 

I tid og utid by Anne Tophøj and Theis Lorentzen

Base in oak, aluminium and stoneware by Anne Dorthe Vester and Maria Bruun

 
 

Architects, designers and artists taking part include:

Anne Fabricius Møller, Anne Tophøj, Anne Dorthe Vester, Maria Bruun, Johan Carlsson, 

Katrine Borup, Kristine Tillge Lund, Marianne Nielsen, Martin Sørensen, Theis Lorentzen

 

Hjemlighed ... an exhibition at
Lavendelstræde 8, 1462 København K
continues until 15th September.

Kunstforeningen af 14 August at Paustian

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Works by twenty artists selected by Kunstforeningen af 14 August are currently on display at Paustian at Kalkbrænderiløbskaj in Copenhagen. 

As well as furniture, sculptures in glass, ceramics and jewellery, the pieces shown here include a table textile by Margrethe Odgaard, a woven Alpaca textile by Karina Nielsen Rios, a framed textile, Flag Domestic, by Vibeke Rohland, a bench seat by Rud Thygesen and baskets by Bent Vinkler.

The exhibition continues through until 5th September.

 

biennalen for kunsthåndværk og design 2015

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This is a dramatic exhibition and not just for the work shown here but the venue, in a warehouse out at the Carlsberg site in Copenhagen, is quite something.

Dating from the late 1960s, this building was a warehouse, Lagerkælder 3, a bottle store for Carlsberg brewery, and it has a massive concrete structure, to support all the weight of beer that was kept here before it was transported out.

Climbing up to the top floor by the concrete staircase it feels, in its abandoned state, like a multi-storey car park or an abandoned factory that might have had a role in The Killing. There is a huge steel lift but taking the stairs was a chance to explore a bit. The warehouse is about to undergo a massive refurbishment as offices and cultural spaces by the architects Gottlieb Paluden as part of the ongoing redevelopment of the whole Carlsberg site.

 

 
 

 

Emerging at the top floor the contrast is dramatic with white-painted concrete, extensive lighting and a new wooden floor for the exhibition space.

For Kunsthåndværk og Design - the Danish Craftwork and Design Association - the contrast between dereliction and swish display and between the architecture of industrial mass production and the highly individual skill and quality of the craft works on display must have been almost too good to believe as the venue for their biennial exhibition.

The theme for this year is Making is Connecting and the expressed aim is to explore new technologies, new materials and new techniques and to promote new connections or new collaborations between different disciplines within the professional works of craft, art, design and architecture.

There are new works from 28 craft artists or in some cases the works are a collaboration by two designers or makers.

At the opening of the exhibition these works, that I've reviewed briefly below, caught my attention and seemed to reflect best the interests and themes explored on this site but the exhibition as a whole is incredible.

Carlsberg Byen, Bryggernes Plads 11, 1799 Copenhagen V

The exhibition is open daily until the 29th of August. For more information see the Biennale web site.

 

Barndom

Connecting Childhood by Annemette Beck and Mette Maya Gregersen

A collaboration between a ceramic artist and a textile designer using PVC rings and porcelain knots ... presumably the title suggests that returning to a more open or child-like way of playing with materials, exploring ideas without the restrictions of preconceptions, has produced something new and less conventional.

Coh&Co bicycle

Mette Walsted and Poul Harder Cohen

Here wood and carbon fibre replace a traditional metal frame to create a bicycle that has a level of craftsmanship normally associated with the work of Danish cabinet makers.

"Hand-built in Copenhagen using local materials, this is a sustainable injection into the throwaway culture that is prevalent in much of the cycle production industry. The aesthetic beauty of the bike compels us to take care of it."

Coh&Co

Nominated for the Biennial Award

Connections

Lone Bedsted

Elements in wool with two colours for each, knitted on a jacquard machine, and connected in different ways.

Colours and patterns within each piece were inspired by trawling nets of local fishermen and Nordic knitting patterns.

Cross Roads

Vibeke Rohland

Vibeke again contrasts the heavy manufactured material of the backing - one of her 'commercial' designs for Kvadrat and the other a cotton denim - with the application of a thick apparently free-form impasto of silk-screen prints and paint. The Cross Roads of the title here refers to the "unpredictable factor that arises during the production of new work, where strict craftsmanship meets art in a free unfolding of expression".

The layers of pigment create complex levels of depth and changes dramatically the way the textile hangs and moves to show a complex relationship between freely applied areas of colour that over a large area take on the distinct qualities of a repeat pattern.

for other posts here about the work of Vibeke Rohland

 

De fire Temperamenter

The four temperaments by Helene Vonsild

 

Here weaving becomes an incredible combination of virtuoso skill and intellectual games. The same weave pattern is repeated in all four pieces but with very different materials - one is a heavy linen - one with fine wool and a silver thread - one with paper cord and a synthetic fibre so it curls and changes in unpredictable ways with any movement and one in silk with a waxed fibre that produces an incredible textile that has shape memory so it can be set into a position that it retains rather like working with paper for traditional Japanese paper sculptures.

For all four fabrics, the weave was adjusted and deconstructed on the loom and all four were conceived from the start as costumes whose form and cut was an integral part of the weaving process .... so concept, craftsmanship, mastery of technique and the execution of the design are absolutely and indivisibly united.

The designs represent the four temperaments of Melancholy, Sanguinity, Irascibility and the Phlegmatic.

See profile on Helene Vonsild for more about this piece and her work

Det er ikke svinets skyld

It is not the pig's fault by Inger Heebøll

Here multiples are used to give the modern breed of pig some sense of an individual personality although the text for the work points out that 20 million pigs are produced in Denmark each year so it becomes impossible to see them as individual.

These heads are contrasted with the freedom and naturalness of wild boars also modelled as part of the work.

 

Hjertet er Rødt

Red is the heart byJørgen Hansen and Bent Vinkler

Large concentric rings of interworked willow branches tied with braided bark encircle a gigantic vessel balanced on a rock. It is the striking contrast of textures and surfaces and the strong colours that make this piece mesmerising but it is the sweeping lines that seem to define and break and expand and constrict the space. The scale and the drama of the work challenges any attempt to define the work specifically as either sculpture or as a craft work. 

Ingen tite

No title by Søren Thygesen

Bricks that are sheared and then stacked to form an almost organic and sculptured shape.

Again this work challenges preconceptions that bricks, particularly modern bricks, should be rectangular and uniform: surely if bricks combine, they combine to form a flat vertical wall or a floor? ... but here bricks become the soft fluid surface of a structure as if seen through the distortion of water in a pool.

"The smooth bricks are sheared in profile where they conjoin. This method translates organic form into the aesthetics of the bricks." Søren Thygesen

 

Lamper

Lamps by Lisbet Frills, Uffe Black Nielsen 

"Friis&Black's Nordic lamps exist at the crossroads where handcraftsmanship and architectural elements meet."

There are five rings with LED lights mounted on the second and fourth ring of this large lamps 840mm across and 360mm high.

Lighting has always played a strong part in Danish interiors and there is a long and well-established tradition of complex designs playing with directed and carefully controlled light and playing with the contrast between parts that are opaque and parts that are brightly illuminated.  

 

Tekstilt finér

Textile veneer by Else-Rikke Bruun

This work takes as a starting point the technique of weaving but translates it from textiles to timber with a solid wood warp and bands of veneer for the weft. The screen has a beautiful sinuous line and has a very strong texture that creates an amazing and dramatic contrast between the natural tone of the wood and deep shadow.

 

Things Change

Maria Bang Espersen

Five glass vessels appear to be conventional vases but the form is deliberately crude and each uses different materials for decoration with shards of glass, brick and stone. These alien materials cause the thin hand-blown glass to stress and crack and possibly, over a period of time, break into fragments.

 

Trellis

Åsa Alm - carpenter Andrea Stokholm

Made in ash, the design of the chair plays clever games with conventional forms by using less common details of construction so here the overall shape is reminiscent of a good, well-made, country chair with a spindle back but the arms are robust, sweeping round and down with horizontal bars below the arm rest that echo the rails between the legs to give the piece much more character ... it is more like a sculpture and here that is emphasised by the dramatic light and shadow.