Into the Woods - an exhibition of work by Lene Thomasen

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Into the Woods is an installation by the Danish textilformgiver (textile designer) Lene Thomasen at Officinet - the gallery of Danske Kunsthåndværkere & Designere - the Danish Association of Artisans and Designers.

Created over the last year and created specifically for this exhibition, the works were inspired by trees, leaves, moss and, perhaps above all, the layering of light and form and colour found in the natural setting of woodland.

Lene Thomasen is a textile designer who trained at Kolding and now works primarily with screen printing. Works shown here are printed on silk, linen, or cotton and on very fine wool and she uses sheer fabrics and textiles that are layered and draped to create depth and a sense of space with weaving, sewing and gathering, where different materials are combined, for an intriguing and strong sense of volume.

In some works Lene Thomasen applies resist techniques - ways to block the dye reaching the fabric and often used to create texture - for instance by using a temporary coat of wax that is removed after the fabric has colour applied with a squeegee.

Patterns are overlaid or shifted or slightly offset and different intensity of dye are used, again to create a sense of depth, so, for example, to create an interpretation of the dappled light through layers of leaves and branches in the canopy in the woods.

Generally, there can be a temptation to see textile printing as simply a form of graphic design, so flat, but here, with the textiles displayed on wood frames, Lene Thomasen shows that textiles can have a strong presence in three dimensions as the works have to be explored from all angles as you walk around the gallery space.

Into the Woods continues at Officinet until 5 June 2022
Officinet, Danske Kunsthåndværkere & Designere, Bredgade 66, 1260 København K 

Lene Thomasen

 

 

knotting strips of fabric through an open canvas base is a technique found not only in this part of Scandinavia but also in the UK and was a traditional and rural way of making rugs … known in some areas as rag rugs because salvaged or worn fabrics - rags - are torn into strips to make a heavy rug often used in front of the fire or hearth of a farm house or cottage
here, some of the strips are velvet so the nap - the short, soft fibres on one side - add to the depth and richness of the effect

 

Lene Thomasen uses rope or cord in some of these works … not only as part of the way of hanging the textile but they become another layer of the design like vines or aerial roots in the wood

many of the works here are about how patterns overlay …. a large repeat can be off-set, or turned through 90 degrees, or overlaid in a different colour or in a different density of dye, to create an impression of depth, or the same pattern is printed on a fine, almost transparent, fabric that is draped or hung in front

note:
As for many of the artists and designers working towards a major exhibitions at Officinet, Lene Thomasen was able to spend several months at Statens Værksteder for Kunst in Copenhagen.

It is an amazing resource, in an old warehouse - Pakhus at Gammel Dok in the centre of the historic city - where designers and artists, with a scholarship or attachment, can use extensive facilities there that they may not have access to in their own studio or maybe not with the space to work at scale. The workshops also provide an environment for the intense focus and the long hours required for a complicated or demanding project.

The online site for the workshops has pen portraits of artists and projects that include photographs of their work in progress and that gives, at least, an impression of the level of technical skill and the mastery of materials that is at the core of the work of formgivers and crucial to the development or evolution of their work.

Lene Thomasen at Statens Værksteder for Kunst
Statens Værksteder for Kunst

Kvinder skaber rum / Women in architecture - an exhibition at the Danish Architecture Center

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A major new exhibition about women architects, planners and designers in Denmark has just opened at the Danish Architecture Centre.

The title - Kvinder skaber rum or Women Create Space - was inspired by an extended essay by Virginia Woolf - "A Room of One's Own" - that was published in 1929. It was based on two public lectures where Woolf discussed free expression and stated that women have to be financially independent if they are to create anything of importance.

In the exhibition - where text is in both Danish and in English - an English title for the exhibition is given simply as Women in Architecture which seems to be much less nuanced than Kvinder skaber rum.

My Danish is poor but I believe rum, as used here, means both room specifically but also space and surely that should be understood as both the tangible space of an actual room but also space in the way we talk about giving people space to grow or space to develop.

So, designing and bringing to reality a room or a series of rooms is a basic and, some would say, the most obvious part of the work of any architect but here 'rum' as space implies that women have also had to create a physical space for themselves as architects - often by establishing their own independent studios.

The first section of the exhibition focuses on seven Danish architects whose work covers the period from 1925 to the end of the century and, generally, concentrates on one specific work or, at most, a few projects for each architect rather than attempting to explore a complete career. These major architects and designers are Ragna Grubb; Hanna Kjærholm; Ula Tafdrup; Grethe Meyer, Karen Clemmenson; Susanne Ussing and Anne Marie Rubin.

There are important interviews with current architects and, for a wider international context, installations by Tatiano Bilbao,, Siv Stangland and Débora Mesa.

read more / review

the opening section of the exhibition on the work of Ragna Grubb … the wallpaper reproduces the design for the restaurant in Kvindernes Bygning

Kvindernes Bygning from Arkitekten in 1939

 

a last chance to see the exhibition Living Better Lives

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This weekend is the last chance to see the important and controversial exhibition Living Better Lives about the work of the Danish architectural studio Vandkunsten.

Tegnestuen Vandkunsten - an architecture firm based in Copenhagen - were founded in 1970 and the exhibition has been an opportunity to see and to assess their work over the last 50 years as their buildings have been seen to challenge and set the tone of “climate and social agendas in Danish architecture and urban planning.”

Here, in the exhibition, they suggest alternative and more sustainable, designs for homes with ideas for housing that would have much smaller areas of personal space but more shared or communal areas and would use sustainable or reused materials in construction.

The exhibition ends on the 18th April.

Living Better Lives
Vandkunsten
Danish Architecture Center
Bryghuspladsen 10,
1473 København K

 

Designmuseum Danmark will reopen on Sunday 19 June 2022

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After two years of extensive renovation work, Designmuseum Danmark will reopen on Sunday 19 June.

There is a new, underfloor heating system so the distinct stone floors throughout the building have all been relaid. The shop and cafe have been redesigned and changes made to the courtyard with the"greenest museum garden" promised. Stonework and woodwork on the exterior have been conserved or, where necessary, replaced.

A newsletter, received yesterday, included a link to the programme for the summer following the reopening with details and dates for an ambitious programme for eight new exhibitions.

Designmuseum Danmark
the exhibition programme

 

Space Saga at the Danish Architecture Center

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Space Saga - a new exhibition about recent research into how people could live on the moon - has just opened at the Danish Architecture Centre and in time for the start of the school winter holiday.

There are certainly plenty of things to occupy children and trigger their imaginations - including a chance to build a moon module in Lego - but intriguing and complicated concepts are also explored that apply more widely to life down here on earth ….. so, for instance, on how light or lack of light effects our sleep patterns, and with a direct impact on our mental and physical health, and important questions are raised about the food we need rather the food we want and the importance of smell and taste in our lives.

With space exploration, there is the stress of very real isolation or, rather, isolation with a few other people in a tightly-confined space so this exhibition is, in part, about how humans have been such a successful animal because we find the ways that help us adapt to even the most extreme and hostile environments.

At the centre of the exhibition is the Lunark module from SAGA Space Architects that was built to help understand how people could survive if a long-term or even a permanent settlement was established on the moon.

In 2020, Sebastian Aristotelis and Karl-Johan Sørensen took the pod to Moriusaq -a bay over 1,000 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle in Greenland - where, for 60 days, it was a base for them to investigate the “psychological effects associated with isolation” in an extreme and hostile environment.

The form of the pod, with interlocked and hinged panels, was inspired by Japanese origami so it could be collapsed down for transport but, unfolded, held within a light aluminium frame and anchored down, it formed a stable structure.

I would not survive for long in such a confined space … I find it difficult to cope with small spaces so I need to look out at sky and light at regular intervals and I tend to pace up and down at regular intervals as I work. On top of that, I suffer badly from SAD during long winter nights so would certainly have failed any profiling tests for selection for this trial although, on the plus side, and for reasons I’ve never been able to fathom, I have never suffered from travel sickness or jet lag so maybe not a complete non starter.

When you look inside the pod, it’s clear that it was designed primarily as a tightly-organised lab in which to work because there is no real space for anything else. There is a small table or workbench on each side, that can be folded back, and with two chairs and a very small stove on the floor - cooking was basic so about boiling a kettle for hot water to rehydrate dried food - and, above on each side, there are cramped bunks buried into the thick insulation panels. In the small lobby of the entrance, or what is euphemistically called the airlock, there is a toilet and that is about it.

The mission was the subject of a series of programmes - Eksperimentet: 60 dage på månen - that were broadcast in June 2021 but can still be viewed on the DR tv channel (in Danish).

A Space Saga
Danish Architecture Centre
from 12 February to 4 September 2022

 
 

Tidskapsler - København i 1990'erne / Time Capsule - Copenhagen in the 1990s

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It was strange but a huge amount of fun to walk round this new exhibition at the Museum of Copenhagen.

There are more than 700 time capsules here - compact perspex boxes - 16x16x26 centimetres - that were produced in 1996 - in the year that Copenhagen was the European City of Culture - and then stored away with a promise that all would be revealed after 25 years.

Before going to the exhibition, I would have said that I remember the 1990s quite clearly. However, half the time, objects in the capsules looked so familiar that surely this was all only yesterday but then I'd see something I'd forgotten all about and, with that shock of remembering, I'd realise it really was all a life time ago ... just how could anyone have done that, worn that or used that or could ever thought that seemed normal.

In one time capsule, there was a membership card for Blockbusters and I had completely forgotten about the ritual trip down to the store, literally a block away, on a Friday or a Saturday afternoon to rent a couple of videos if it was going to be a quiet evening.

And it was clearly a very different time and a very different city because, back in the 1990s, Copenhagen was on the brink of bankruptcy with high levels of unemployment. The port had been in decline for at least a decade and much of the housing in the city, particularly in Vesterbro, was very rundown.

Many who could, had abandoned the central districts and moved to new suburbs like Rødøvre or Lyngby. In 1950, there were around 768,000 people living in Copenhagen but the population declined through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and by 1990 there were only about 465,000 people living here. That’s a significant decline.

With hindsight, the turning point may well have been when Copenhagen was chosen as the European Capital of Culture in 1996. That triggered new investment in culture and it was certainly seen as a way to stimulate tourism but there would also be important, long-term gains.

Film making and theatre in the city and art and literature were reinvigorated and there was a new optimism in planning and development.

The city began to see the harbour as a potential resource with important new projects for civic building along the harbour with work starting on an extension to the national library that was to leap the old port road so, instead of looking inward to a garden and to the parliament buildings, it staked an early claim to the water frontage. Work began on a new opera house at the centre of the inner harbour and new developments of office buildings were started on either side at the south end of the harbour, including on the site of the old Burmeister & Wain engineering works immediately below Knippelsbro and, below Langebro, along Kalvebod Brygge, on the city side, and along a new harbour park - Havneparken - on the Amager side.

Presumably, back in 1996, the idea behind these time capsules was not just to capture that moment in time - the zeitgeist - but were a way to make people focus on what was good or bad about their lives in the city and perhaps decide what was important for the future.

Individuals and all sorts of societies - including schools, clubs and workplaces - made time capsules and the boxes are filled with an incredible range of objects from condoms, to needles from the drug culture in the city, along with music cassettes and, CDs - then a new and more expensive technology for playing music - and there are floppy discs; a spool of labels for adding bar codes and even mobile phones that were then relatively novel and relatively expensive. There are guide books to the park at Frederiksberg and bus and train timetables.

One box has a single capsule of Fontex .... an anti depressant that was, apparently, discovered in 1972 but first prescribed in 1986.

The time capsules are grouped by general themes and these include:

Kulturlivet / Arts and culture
København som filmby / Film City Copenhagen
i byen i København / out on the town in Copenhagen
Den Første Pride / Copenhagen's First Pride
Body and Mind
Everyday life
Hiphop
Comedy

 

 Alongside the time capsules are photographs and larger objects from the collection to provide a context with separate sections reflecting many aspects of popular culture and particularly music and club entertainment.

Major cultural events and trends discussed include the Dogme Collective of film makers - Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, Kristian Levring and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen - and there is a director's chair with the name Lars von Trier on the back.

Display panels alongside the time capsules explain the emergence of grunge and techno and a fast-developing and rapidly changing youth culture with amazing artefacts like pairs of Dr. Martens boots and Buffalo Boots.

Copenhagen was the first city to launch free bikes that were financed by adverts. They could be unlocked with a 20 DKK coin that was returned when you returned the bike.

But the exhibition also reflects serious problems and concerns of the time like the aids epidemic. Aids spread through the 1980s and 1990s and in 1996 the first EuroPride - part of a campaign for the recognition of gay rights - was held in Copenhagen and the largest single item in the exhibition is an aids quilt.

The journalist Lasse Lavresen is quoted as saying "The 1990s was a decade of irony when nobody meant what they said, and everybody thought history had been relegated to the past."

In one time capsule there is a sperm sample and maybe, just maybe, that can be seen as ironic - or possibly sardonic - but how many kids put on a pair of Buffalo Boats with the hope that it was seen as a comment on contemporary politics or even as simply a sarcastic gesture? For some, what they chose for their time capsule was a shout of defiance and for others a cry for help but irony? No, not irony but certainly there is a vitality that makes life in the city now seem rather bland in comparison.

 

Københavns Museum / Museum of Copenhagen
Tidskapsler - København i 1990'erne / Time Capsule - Copenhagen in the 1990s
the exhibition opened on 4 February and continues until 31 October 2022

the legacy from 1996 - the year when Copenhagen was the European City of Culture

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One information panel in the exhibition Tidskapsler - København i 1990’erne at Københavns Museum, simply listed the galleries and venues that were established in 1996 as venues for the events that were held through that year when Copenhagen was the European City of Culture … and it was and is an incredible and long-lasting legacy for all have survived and all, 25 years later, have crucial roles in the life of the city.

  • Folkets Hus in Vesterbro - close to Enghaveparken - had opened in 1956. It was threatened with demolition but was relaunched in 1996 as a major venue under the name Vega

  • Cisterne - cisterns for fresh water on the hill top south of the palace of Frederiksberg - were converted into a gallery and event space

  • Forbrændingen - an old incinerator plant in Albertslund - was turned into a youth-run cultural centre

  • Arken - a museum of modern art in Ishøj - opened in March 1996

  • thematic gardens in Valby Park opened as part of a major garden exhibition

  • Metronomen in Aksel Møllers Have opened as a centre about building but later became an art and music venue

  • Fotografisk Center in the Meat Market district opened

  • Torpedohallen, the torpedo boat hall on Holmen, was used as a venue for theatre and concerts before being converted into apartment buildings

  • Øksnehallen - the main building of the former cattle market - opened as an exhibition and event venue

  • Filmhuset / The Film House, on the south side of the King's Garden, opened as a new home for the Danish Film Institute, Danish Film Museum and State Film Archive

  • Det Kongelige Bibliotek - a large extension to the National Library known as the Black Diamond - was set to open during the city of culture celebrations although it was not completed until 1999

Torpedohallen - converted into apartments by Vandkunsten

Cisterne

 

Stamsteder – Københavns sidste værtshuse / The local - Copenhagen's last pubs

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Stamsteder – Københavns sidste værtshuse marks the publication of a new book on "brown" pubs in the city and is described as a pop-up photographic exhibition by the Museum of Copenhagen.

The book was written Anders Højberg Kamp and Johannes Jacobsen with photographs by Thomas Skou and is published by Savador Books.

It records brown pubs and they have played a crucial role in the life of the city, acting as social centres and, for the old, the lonely or the desperate, as homes or a place to escape from home and their regular drinkers as families.

There were over 1,000 pubs in the city and it's suburbs in the late 1980s but that number is down to 200 now.

"The places contain stories and secrets as dark as the darkest bitter, and merry as a light ale and the party can continue until the bright morning ..... (but) the winds of urban renewal blow out into every nook and cranny of the city."

In the exhibition there are photographs of 14 pubs from 14 districts across Copenhagen and Frederiksberg.

Indre by - Centralhjørnet
Vesterbro - Pinden
Østerbro - Bassinet
Frederiksberg - Vinstue 90
Nørrebro - Sorte René
Amager - Cafe Schelenborg
Islands Brygge - Café Isbjørnen
Christianshavn - Fingerbøllet
Christiania - Woodstock
Sydhavnen - Café Fremforalt
Valby - Den Gyldenblonde
Vanløse - Jydeholm Bodega
Nordvest - Café Fuglereden
Brønshøj-Husum - Husum Bodega

Stamsteder – Københavns sidste værtshuse
Københavns Museum / Museum of Copenhagen,
Stormgade 18, Copenhagen
from 1 December 2021 to 2 January 2022

Maker's Dimension at Bygning A

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Maker’s Dimensions shows final projects by fifteen students who graduated this summer from the Royal Academy Crafts schools for glass and ceramics on the island of Bornholm.

Studying at the academy, gives students time, facilities and support to not only develop their technical skills but also an opportunity to experiment - to take ideas in new directions or to find a balance between technical methods and the intrinsic or potential qualities of the materials they are working with - and time to discover and develop a distinct and appropriate personal style.

What can be seen here are the works of young designer-makers who are exploring colour and texture, experimenting with pure forms or using pattern and repetition and testing the qualities of and potential limits of glass and clay.

My Materials, My Tools, My Components, My Collaborative Partner
Hanna Torvik


Works in the exhibition are by:
Annamaria Margareth Hartvig-Clausen, Armel Desrues, Clara Rudbeck Toksvig, Hanna Torvik, In Kyong Lee, Jasmin Franko, Josephine Alberthe Molter, Laura Godsk Vestergaard, Maren Gammelgaard Aaserud, Maria Kildahl Mathiasen, Nathalie Cohn, Sara Vinderslev Mirkhani, Signe Boisen, Thea Dejligbjerg Djurhuus, and Tiphanie Germaneau

Maker's Dimension
26 November 2021 to 9 January 2022
Bygning A, Kløvermarksvej 70,
2300 København S

Det Kongelige Akademi på Bornholm
– Crafts in Glass and Ceramics

update:
Bygning A had to close on 19 December - because of legislation for the control of Coronavirus-19 - but they will reopen on Sunday 16 January 2022 and Maker’s Dimensions will now continue through to 30 January 2022


Ego
Laura Godsk Vestergaard

Kenophobia
Jasmin Franko

Vases Communicant
Armel Desrues

An Ode
Marta Kildahl Mathiasen

 

Bo bedre bæredytigt / Living Better Lives

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”Lad Os” (Let’s) - the Vandkunsten Manifesto

Lad os bo mindre og bedre!
    Let's live smaller and better!

Lad os dele mere!
    Let's share more!

Lad naturen flytte ind!
    Let nature move in!

Lad os gøre det selv, sammen!
    Let's DIY, together!

Lad det være og se skønheden!
    Let it be and enjoy its beauty!

This is an important exhibition to celebrates the 50th anniversary of the architectural studio Vandkunsten. It looks at some of their major projects from those decades - but also asks crucial questions about how we can construct more sustainable buildings in the future by using materials in new ways or by giving old materials a second life.

The architects and designers from Vandkunsten have built their reputation on coming at problems with a less conventional approach and here they not only propose a “manifesto” for the design of homes but also suggest that, in the future, homes have to be smaller - much smaller: we should share facilities with our neighbours with the trade off that there would be to more communal areas but less private space.

Here, a home built at the the centre of the exhibition has a floor area of just 37 square metres that is not a holiday home or a temporary home but what could be a model for permanent living space for two or three people.

Recently, it has been suggested that building standards for homes in Copenhagen should be modified - for modified read downgraded - but is that really the only or the right way forward?

Living Better Lives is an opportunity to consider the implications of having less space and to think about alternative ways of building when most of us do accept that the way we live really does have to be sustainable.

Bo bedre bæredygtigt / Living Better Lives
20 November 2021 - 18 April 2022
Dansk Arkitektur Center / Danish Architecture Center
Bryghuspladsen 10, 1473 København K

Vandkunsten

 
 

POET SLASH ARTIST at Kunsthal Charlottenborg

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Commisssioned initially for the Manchester International Festival and curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Lemn Sissay, the exhibition has been reconfigured for Denmark and includes the works of 35 Danish and international artists and poets. 

Work from Poet Slash Artist will also shown in streets, and at train stations and bus stops at several hundred locations across Denmark.

This is the first exhibition of what is to be a biennale event.

Poet Slash Artist
20 November to 31 December 2021
Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Nyhavn 2, Copenhagen

 

TID TAKT TONE - Snedkernes Efterårsudstilling / Cabinetmakers' Autumn Exhibition

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This year, the Cabinetmakers’ Autumn Exhibition will be shown at Sophienholm, a country house 12 kilometres north of the city and that dates, in its present form, from the early 19th century.

“ Tact and tone can be interpreted in terms of content and form, as tempo and tone both denote the ways in which we humans are together on - often with a respectful demeanour and in the light of social rules that change over time - and the formative dimension that says something about a furniture's rhythm and beat, colour and tone.”

There are 44 works in the exhibition including chairs, tables, shelving, lighting and less utilitarian objects that show the highest levels of skill in their production.

Images and basic information about the works in Tid Takt Tone have been published online and the exhibition continues at Sophienholm through to 2 January 2022.

Snedkernes Efterårsudstilling
TID TAKT TONE
Sophienholm

70% LESS CO2 - Conversion to a Viable Age

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An important exhibition has just opened at the Royal Academy schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation.

Students and teaching departments were asked to submit their projects for inclusion and 31 were chosen for the exhibition to illustrate how new ideas, new materials and new methods of construction or manufacturing will help to reduce global emissions of CO2 by at least 70%.

Significant levels of CO2 are produced by the fashion industries from the production of the raw materials through manufacturing and through high levels of waste and around 10% of the global emissions of CO2 are from the ubiquitous use of concrete in all forms of construction so several projects here suggest major changes to what we make and build and how we use materials.

But there are also projects on using new materials from algae, lichen and mycelium and even one project that uses pine needles for insulation.

There are short assessments of all the projects on the academy site.

70% LESS CO2
Det Kongelige Akademi
Arketektur Design Konservering
Danneskiold-Samsøes Allé 53, København K
7 October 2021 - 14 January 2022

The future is now

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L1057147.JPG

❝ No one knows the future. But it is important to try to imagine it anyway. The Royal Academy opens its doors for the exhibition 'The Future is Now', where visitors can see, listen to and immerse themselves in four different versions of the academy in 2050. ❞


The Future is Now
Det Kongelige Akademi
Philip de Langes Allé, København K
continues until 30 October 2021

L1060237.JPG

CAFx 2021 - Copenhagen Architecture Festival 2021

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Today is the start of CAFx 2021 ... the Copenhagen Architecture Festival.

There is an extensive programme of events in Copenhagen and Aarhus with films, discussions, performances, lectures, architects opening their studios and offices for events and a number of city walks.

The theme for the festival this year is Landscapes of Care and that is divided into four areas covering ….

Portraits, projects and practices
Diversity and community
Health and architecture
From climate sinner to climate agent

 events include:

  • the premier of a film portrait of Dorte Mandrup from the Louisiana video series

  • a short festival of films by David Lynch including screenings of the films Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway

  • tour of Christianshavn to look at how culture, community and individualism have moulded the urban landscape with discussion on how the life of the street has been "sanitised and tamed".

  • Jan Gehl and Peter Thule Kristensen discuss how urban spaces develop

  • The Battle for the Square Meters - a discussion on the framework for community-orientated activities in Copenhagen’s urban spaces

  • a none-rave rave in the courtyard of Thorvaldsens Museum

  • Cities for Free - film and debate about the urban development of the city in the future with a focus on Lynetteholm

  • Diagnoses: The space of the psyche from the Victorian to the welfare society

  • Brumleby by Michael Gottlieb Bindesbøll - housing built following the outbreak of cholera in 1853 - a tour including the co-operative association building museum

  • Aesthetics for care - a talk on how art has an impact on well being

  • Frederiksberg Hospital - a landscape of care - how to preserve the cultural history as the site is redeveloped

  • Bispebjerg Healing Garden - from 1913 by Martin Nyrop and the garden designer Edvard Glæsel

  • Landscape of care in the post pandemic city - an event organised by Emergency Architecture and Human Rights

  • Creating resilience - changing coastal landscapes - a discussion about current research on the impact of climate change on the coastline of Amager

Copenhagen Architectural Festival
7 October - 17 October 2021

journal / programme / calendar

 

Kunst & Psyke / Art & Psychology .... try walking in my shoes

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An exhibition on Kongens Nytorv that marks World Mental Health Day on 10 October.

The aim is to increase awareness of mental illness and to help a wider public to understand some of the problems that fellow citizens have to deal with when they live with a range of problems from psychotic episodes to hyper activity and attention disorders.

Curated by Ane-Cecilie Tovgaard, each panel has a portrait of the person and a photograph of their shoes and an account - a pen portrait - about problems encountered and about the consequences, day to day, from mental illness or mental difference.

Yet again, this open-air exhibition shows how public space in the city brings important issues to a large number of people who might not go to a museum or gallery or indoor venue for a specific event but whose attention can be attracted as they walk across the space.

Kunst & Psyke
Try Walking in My Shoes
4 October - 25 October 2021

 
 

UKURANT 2021 - PERSPECTIVES

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Ukurant was founded by Kamma Rosa Schytte, Josefine Krabbe Munck, Kasper Kyster and Lærke Ryom.

Following an open invitation, and with more than 200 applicants, the works of 17 designers and artists were selected for this exhibition.

These works explore the overlaps between design and art and form and material with a strong emphasis on colour and texture.

The exhibition was design by Frederik Gustav and has been supported by the Danish design company Muuto.

photographs of all the works

Ukurant Perspectives, at Amaliegade 38

Perspectives was part of 3daysofdesign
but remains open every day through to Sunday 26 September

note:
Det Classenske Bibliotek in Frederiksstaden was built in the 1790s to house books collected by the industrialist and landowner Johan Frederik Classen.

Det Classenske Bibliotek, Amaliegade
Revalued, Elly Feldstein
Passive Coated Chair, Carsten In Der Elst
Lath Chair, Tanita Klein
Monolith, Baptiste Comte
Side Table, Alexander Kirkeby

 
 

Folded Objects - the work of Poul Christiansen at A Petersen

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An exhibition to mark the 50th anniversary of Sinusline, Model 172 - one of the most popular lamps produced by the Danish lighting company LE KLINT. It was designed by Poul Christiansen and was launched in 1971.

The exhibition includes a number of the folded paper lamps and elegant and complex geometric forms with sharp folded lines in paper that are fascinating, small-scale sculptures.

LE KLINT was established in 1943 and Poul Christiansen has been working with the company for more than fifty years.

LE KLINT
A Petersen, Kløvermarksvej 70A
15 September - 24 October 2021

 
 

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