3daysofdesign - COME AGAIN 2.0

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I didn’t get out to Cable Park until the very end of the third day of 3daysofdesign. That was not deliberate apart from the fact that I was trying to take a logical route from place to place to avoid doubling back or making long jumps across the city but there could not have been a better way of ending what was, by then, beginning to feel like a marathon run.

By a very long way, this was the most relaxed show of them all and - out on the edge of the sound - the light coming off the water was amazing.

The venue was the studio of the designer, illustrator and ‘paper poet’ Helle Vibeke Jensen and the works, by craftsmen and designers, were shown on the board walks and the hung on the walls of the wooden sheds and outbuildings of the water sports centre and were even shown wrapped around or draped over wakeboards.

Kids in wet suits were not phased and this showed an important aspect of Danish design …. here good design and an interest in art can be just a part of everyday life.

This is the second outing of COME AGAIN, and as with the exhibition at the Offcinet - the gallery of Danske Kunsthåndværker & Designere in Bredgade - this was curated by the jeweller Helen Clara Hemsley and Helle Vibeke Jensen.

Helle Vibeke Jensen
Helen Clara Hemsley

Copenhagen Cable Park
Kraftværksvej 24, 2300 København S

 

Exhibitors:
Helen Clara Hemsley, Janne K. Hansen and Mette Saabye with George William Bell, Katrine Borup, Rasmus Fenhann, Line Frank, Helle Vibeke Jensen, Lise Bjerre Schmidt, Lotte Myrthue, Martine Myrup, Anne Fabricius Møller, Annelie Grimwade Olofsson, Camilla Prasch and Tina Ratzer.

Tina Ratzer
Reeds

Helen Clara Helmsley
Looking back, to look forward 2

Lotte Myrthue
Strøtanker 3

Rasmus Fenhann
Air Bee n’ Bee

 

NÅLEN I HØSTAKKEN / THE NEEDLE IN THE HAYSTACK

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3daysofdesign - the annual design festival in Copenhagen - is a good time for galleries and museums in the city to open new exhibitions.

The major exhibition in the city this year - NÅLEN I HØSTAKKEN / THE NEEDLE IN THE HAYSTACK - opened today at Dansk Architektur Center and shows the work of the Danish designer Cecilie Manz.

In part, the exhibition celebrates the award to Cecilie Manz of the Nationalbankens Jubilæumsfunds Hæderspris and explores her design process by looking at a number of major projects and at "the trajectory from intuition to the finished work."

This is the most elegant and certainly one of the most sophisticated and carefully presented exhibitions that I have seen in the city. Initial models, intermediate prototypes and finished designs are set out on fine, pale grey fabric and these surfaces also act as screens for sequences of images of working drawings from the design studio that are projected down in white outline to show the rational, step by step evolution of a design and the precise and detailed work that is required for each stage to realise the design, and particularly all the modifications required for industrial production and when, for example in ceramic wares for the table, a range of pieces is produced in different sizes.

There are five main sections to the exhibition, starting with the stages for the design of the WORKSHOP CHAIR and then a major project to design an extensive collection of porcelain dinnerware for ARITA JAPAN.

 

The third section, called FREEWHEELING, includes a wide range of furniture and household fittings designed by Manz and the fourth area, under the title DETAILING, has the subheading Purpose, Meticulousness, Dedication and includes glassware and the Beolit speaker from Bang & Olufsen.

The final section of the exhibition is called simply OBJECTS and is a fascinating and revealing collection of things, acquired by the designer over many years. These eclectic objects have inspired a design; triggered an idea; simply been a starting point for a design or suggested a shape or set a tone for the style of a finished product. 

Cecilie Manz - NÅLEN I HØSTAKKEN / THE NEEDLE IN THE HAYSTACK
Dansk Architektur Center, Bryghuspladsen 10, København
16 September 2021 - 9 January 2022

Cecilie Manz Studio

 
 

CHART ART 2021

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CHART Art Fair at the palace of Charlottenborg - the home of the Danish Royal Academy of Art - is a major event in the city when commercial art galleries from Nordic countries come together to show the work of the contemporary artists they represent.

It is a great social event but this year seems particularly important as pandemic restrictions in the city have just been lifted and Copenhagen returns to a semblance of normality.

There are always subsidiary shows at galleries around the city but also two main events run in parallel. CHART Architecture is a competition for architects, designers and studios to produce pavilions that are constructed in the two main courtyards of Charlottenborg and are used as venues where visitors can buy food and drink and, an inaugural event, CHART Book Fair, will be held in Festsalen - the hall over the entrance to Charlottenborg.

There is an extensive programme of performances and talks through the three days that the fair is open to the public.

In recent years a design fair, CHART Design, has been held at the gallery of Den Frie at Østerport. This was not part of the programme this year but hopefully it will return in the future.

our times? a photograph of a photographer photographing people being photographed

 
 

CHART art fair opening

26 August: Preview -
by invitation only 11-18

27 August: 11-19
28 August: 11-18
29 August: 11-17

CHART Art 2021

 

CHART Architecture

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CHART Architecture is an annual competition to design pavilions that are erected in the two courtyards of Charlottenborg and they have a major role as they are the venues for drink and food served through the four days of the CHART Art Fair.

To give focus to the initial design process, there is a theme for each year and this year it was to explore the concept of Social Architecture where spaces and objects “sets a tone and a stage for social or private engagements.”

Forty-six proposals were submitted by graduate students or newly-graduated architects, designers and artists from 28 different countries.

In the Spring five finalists were selected by an international jury that included:

Bjarke Ingels, architect and founder of BIG
the architect Shohei Shigematsu, from OMA
David Zahle, architect and partner from BIG
Sabine Marcelis, award winning designer from Holland
Simon Lamunière, director of OPEN HOUSE
Danish artist Nina Beier

CHART 2021
CHART Architecture 2021

courtyard stage by the Swedish designer Fredrik Paulsen

Situated Exteriors
by Kathrine Birkbak, Anja Fange, and Joe Mckenzie

 The architecture of Charlottenborg is echoed in wire panels.

OM
by guilt.studio
Diana Claudia Mot, Marius Mihai Ardelean, Claudia Lavinia Cimpan, and Mihkel Pajuste

 A pavilion constructed with aluminium ventilation ducts.

 

Leverage
by Rumgehør
Rasmus R.B. Maabjerg, Nikolaj Noe, and Victor Tambo

Made from dunnage bags - light inflatable bags used generally to secure and protect freight.

Winner of CHART Architecture 2021

CURTAIN CALL
by Rosita Kær, Nina Højholdt, Thomas Christensen, Sam Collins, and Lauda Vargas

The textiles are reused to create “curtain walls” that define and divide the spaces.

 

 

FIELD
by Torsten Sherwood and Benedicte Brun

 The green canopy over a long communal table is fresh bean shoots.

 

Solutions at Royal Danish Academy

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Architecture Design Conservation: graduate projects 2021

Shown here are 220 projects from the students in the schools of architecture, design and conservation who have graduated from the Royal Danish Academy in 2021.

This is an opportunity to see the work of the Academy schools, with their focus on the UN Sustainability goals, and these projects show clearly the ways in which teaching has taken onboard the challenge of climate change and the need to reassess our approach to materials for new developments and our approach to the increasing need to conserve or adapt existing buildings.

Here are the young architects and designers of the next generation whose designs for buildings and for furniture, industrial products, fashion and graphics will have to provide solutions to the new challenges.

As last year, the graduate projects can also be seen on line.

note:
after an initial opening in late June, the exhibition closed through July but then reopened on 2 August and can be seen daily from 10.00 to 17.00 through to 20 August 2021

Royal Danish Academy Architecture Design Conservation
Philip de Langes Allé 10
1435 Copenhagen K

Graduation 2021: SOLUTIONS
the exhibition on line

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Berørt / Touched at Statens Museum for Kunst

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With restrictions imposed by the lockdown because of the pandemic, Statens Museum for Kunst - the National Gallery in Copenhagen - is still closed but a new exhibition has opened in the gardens at the entrance.

Under the title Berørt or Touched, this is an installation of three large but very different sculptures … works made by artists as their response to the pandemic and inspired by comments and images uploaded for the PARAT project.

Between May and November 2020, Danes were asked to upload photographs and thoughts on the pandemic and, for every one, the COOP donated 5 DKK to Røde Kors, the Danish Red Cross, for them to support vulnerable people through PARAT / READY …. a service from the Red Cross and their volunteers to provide help to collect medicines for vulnerable people confined to their homes; accompany people on walks or on public transport, when they feel unable to do that alone, and to help vulnerable people deal with coronavirus tests and vaccines.

 
 

Benediikte Bjerre (born 1987)
Eee-O- Eleven 2021
Aluminium

The frame forms an outline that appears to be a gigantic laptop computer.

“Benedikte Bjerre's sculpture borrows its form from a familiar consumer product, overscaled here to also delimit a physical space, hinting at the invisible spaces and distancing mechanisms that have emerged during the pandemic.”

 

Sonja Lillebæk Christensen (born 1972)
Skylden / The Blame 2021
LED video collage - loop 12 minutes 30 seconds

A strong recurring theme is hands and the work, with images moving across four screens, looks at many of the new situations in which we now find ourselves.

It explores the paradox that we feel divided and isolated in our own day-to-day lives but we are united, as never before, by a problem that is universal.

 
 

Kaspar Bonnén (born 1968)
JEG TROEDE VI SKULLE BYGGE NOGET OP SAMMEN MEN JEG BLEV VED MED AT GRAVE
I THOUGHT WE WERE GOING TO BUILD SOMETHING TOGETHER BUT I KEPT DIGGING
Mursten / clay bricks

Bonnén is a writer and a visual artist and his work uses salvaged bricks laid out across a bank of grass.

“When we look back at the time of the coronavirus pandemic years from now, what will we have left behind - or abandoned - and what have we created together?”

 
 

the exhibition continues at Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen until 2 May 2021
it will then transfer to other galleries in Denmark and can be seen at:

Kunsthal Aarhus from the 9 May to 20 June 2021
SMK Thy from the 26 June to 15 August 2021
Kunstmuseum Brandts from the 21 August to 24 October 2021

Berørt at Statens Museum for Kunst
berørt.dk
PARAT / READY

Copenhagen moves outdoors ….

As I was taking photographs of the exhibition in the gardens at the front of Statens Museum for Kunst, there was an exercise class for children who had taken over the large circular pond at the front of the gallery - the water is drained through the Winter to protect it from frost - and there were three girls in a line skipping on the steps up to the closed entrance.

Pandemic and the lockdown has changed how people in the city use public space and, if a new appreciation of our squares, streets and parks continues after restrictions lift, then that will be one positive gain to come out of all this.

 
 
 

Skud på stammen at the Design Werck gallery

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Bord dæk dig - en eventyrlig historie / Table deck yourself - an adventure from fairy tales

An exhibition of furniture with tables and chairs by young cabinetmakers from Snedkernes Uddannelser and with lighting by students from the glass school of EUC Nordvestsjælland in Holbæk.

All the designs were inspired by traditional fairy tales.

The title of the exhibition - Bord dæk dig or Table Set Yourself - is from a story by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm about three brothers who are sent off to make their fortunes as apprentices and about the gifts they are given by their masters when they finish their training …. so more than appropriate for the theme for an exhibition by young furniture makers.

In the tale, one of the young apprentices is given a table by his master that, on command, sets or lays itself with a magic feast. The table was carried on the back of the apprentice so the table here is on a version of trestles and the top is made from many layers of veneer that must symbolise potential new layers as the table 'sets itself'.

The inspiration for the other tables were four tales from Hans Christian Andersen …...

Thumbelina was a girl who was so small that she was carried off by a toad and captured by a beetle but escaped on the back of a swallow and that tale inspired a table shaped like a beetle that is supported on insect-like legs and with chairs like giant insect or butterfly wings.

The Top and the Ball, also by Hans Christian Andersen, is a tale of love and loss and rejection and the complicated inlay of the top reflects the pattern of a satin ball that became lost and faded.

The Little Match Girl was caught out in a snow storm, and struck three of her matches for light and warmth and this has inspired the brilliant legs of the small tables with tops like match boxes with three of the four legs like used and burnt matches and the fourth match unused.

Klods-Hans …. Hans the Blockhead - seems to me to be a rather more obscure story that is less easy to interpret. it is the tale of three brothers, two of whom are sent off on horseback by their father to win the hand of the princess with fine wit and fine words and the blockhead son follows behind on a goat and collects on the way a dead bird and rank rubbish as gifts for the princess. The chairs are inspired by the goat but the table with its staggered ends and sliding extension leaves? …. is this the crenellations of the royal castle?

This is an exhibition about the imagination of the designers whose inventions are realised by cabinetmakers with the technical skills required to produce furniture of this quality.

 

Photographs for the catalogue were taken at the fairy-tale castle of Jægerspris Slot on Sjælland.

 


note:
I think that Skud på stammen can be translated as shoot or bud on the stem or tree trunk. It’s like the English phrase about mighty oaks that from little acorns grow but implies new growth or the new branch on the tree rather than a completely new tree so the relationship between the apprentice and the master.

Design Werck as a venue for the exhibition was planned for the Spring but it had to be postponed because of the lockdown.

Actually, it is a great show for this time of year, in the build up to Christmas, in part because of the fairy tale theme but also because the Christmas season is when, for Danes, the dining table and food becomes such an important part of celebrations with friends and family.

more photographs of the furniture and lights 

the exhibition opened on 6 November 2020
at Design Werck, Krudløbsvej 12, 1439 København
Design Werck
NEXT Uddannelse

note: Design Werck does not open on Mondays or Tuesdays

 

Claydies at Ann Linnemann Galleri

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Claydiesselfies - an exhibition of the work of Karen Kjælgård-Larsen and Tina Broksø at Officinet - the gallery of Danske Kunsthåndværkere & Designere - was unfortunately disrupted by the closure of galleries during the lockdown of the city with the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

This exhibition, at the gallery of Ann Linnemann in Kronprinsessegade, is a welcome chance to see some of the works shown in that larger exhibition in the Spring.

Again it is possible to take selfies 'wearing' some of the full-sized ceramics of vests and T-shirts. If that is difficult to imagine then just think about those old seaside and fairground attractions with large painted cartoons of large ladies and skinny men in Edwardian swimming costumes without faces but with large holes where people stick through their faces from the back to be photographed.

The t-shirts with a Claydies logo on the chest or a string vest or a pleated skirt are obviously an ironic parody that comments on our obsession with both fashion and with taking pictures of ourselves or having our faces in every shot to prove we were there and show what a fantastic time we were having. But these huge pots are also a phenomenal affirmation of the ceramic skills of the two potters.

As I said in my review of the initial exhibition, the best cartoonists are usually highly-skilled artists who understand completely the techniques and skills in drawing that form the basis for their work. You have to master an art before you can subvert it. Here, at the Claydiesselfies exhibition, the works show an amazing and quirky sense of humour but also look at the use of colour, the use of different glazes, with references to various ceramic styles, but they are also very large pots that must have been difficult to fire. Virtuoso pieces.

This exhibition has smaller works that were not in the Officinet exhibition including the infamous and really rather macabre ceramic eye balls and surreal and unsettling clay noses and lips and ears on lumpy stalks that are set to face a mirror so that when you look into the mirror the lips and ears replace or overlay your own. I guess you have to be there and have done that to appreciate the joke ….. a bit like selfies really.

review of Claydiesselfies at Officinet

the exhibition is at
Ann Linneman Galleri, Kronprinsessegade 51, København
from 8 October 2020 until 14 November 2020

Claydies

 

Graduation2020 - the work of students from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Bornholm

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An exhibition of their degree projects by students who graduated this year from the programme of Crafts: Glass and Ceramics at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Design School Bornholm.

Here you can see the works in glass and ceramics as young artists and makers explore materials and techniques and as they develop a distinct approach to their craft.

The range of styles is incredible but clear themes through all the pieces are the exploration of colour and the use of distinct and strong texture as they relate to both the material and to the forms explored.

An important aspect of the exhibition is how the graduates chose to display and to light their work.

the exhibition ends on 4 October 2020
A.Petersen Collection & Craft

The exhibition catalogue designed by Rasmus Kvist has a short introduction and then, for each student, a short description of their work with photographs by Kirstine Autzen.

 

3daysofdesign - UKURANT OBJECTS

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UKURANT was founded in October 2019 by Josefine Krabbe Munck, Kamma Rosa Schytte, Kasper Kyster and Lærke Ryom and they describe themselves as a community and a platform to provide support for young designers across disciplines.

They are questioning the mass production of design where large and well-established companies aim primarily for low manufacturing costs or rely on a back catalogue where an old designs can be given a new life.

The exhibition has “Experimental furniture and design objects by 24 young designers showing how a new generation challenge traditions, experiment with materials and technologies, question cautious aesthetics and challenge commercial design.”

Some of the aims of the group are set out in the catalogue for the exhibition so "UKURANT acknowledges design objects as functional and sculptural. We find that the industry undermines this statement. UKURANT insists on combining an artistic practice with commercial products and challenge the biased notion of commercial design." 

Many of the designs challenge conventional forms and all experiment with materials either by using standard and well-established materials in less conventional ways or by using new materials for different outcomes for standard design products such as chairs. Several designers here are doing what all good designers should do and that is working with a specific material to understand what can or can't be done and to experiment with new techniques or new tools to push that material to new possibilities.

What is common to most of the works is a move towards strong textures and the use of bold and solid shapes that are a clear rejection of minimalism in recent Danish design where the aim so often seems to be to pare down or reduce structure so that designs, for furniture and household objects, can become thin or flat so appear to lack bold confident form or distinct character. Many of the works in the exhibition have a sense of drama and a scale that occupies space in a way that is closer to the theatre and closer to the baroque style of the 17th century than to the rationalism of Danish design from the 1820s or the functionalism of modern Danish design since the 1950s.

The exhibition was designed by Emil Qvist for the basement space of Nyt I bo in Store Kongensgade in Copenhagen and was one of the major events of 3daysofdesign that was moved on to early September from the Spring because of the pandemic. Normally, through 3daysofdesign, this design store makes space available throughout the ground-floor shop area for smaller design companies to show their products but this was a major exhibition and establishes Nyt I bo as a significant gallery venue.

photographs and basic information about the designs

3daysofdesign
UKURANT
Nyt i bo

When Waters Retract - Lars Ryom
Smoke Cloud Chandelier - Christian and Jade
Artificial Formations - David Ronco
Illusory Functions - Margarida Lopes Pereira
No. 13 - Therese Hald Boesen

 

Foame - Bonnie Hvillum