Chair, Chair, Chair, Lamp, Table, Bed, Sofa

A chair is a chair is a chair. Chair, chair, chair. Richard Woods made a chair. Matt Calderwood took a ‘For Sale’ sign and made it into a chair. Anna Bjerger found a chair and used it as a surface for painting. Where does sculpture end and furniture start. Where do art and design meet. This show includes chairs, sculptures of chairs and sculptures that use chairs as material.

What about Scandinavian design. What we do we think of when we think of Danish design? Wood, nature, harmony, candle light, calm, coziness. What about Verner Panton, one of the great Danish designers of the mid 20c. Somehow his brightly coloured, plastic, pop influenced work doesn’t fit the Danish image of itself. The Nordic brand that has been retrospectively packaged and sold to the world has become a self fulfilling prophecy adopted and believed by the Danes themselves. This show examines all this. We’ve made a twisted, surreal furniture store to take a look at alternative histories and realities. A place where Verner Panton is as Danish as Hans Wegner. Hygge is not the only option.

Simon Starling’s has remade Gerrit Rietveld’s Zig Zag chair, an icon of modernism, using 45,910 year old wood which was found preserved and workable in a bog in Africa. Starling’s chair is placed on a plinth by Malene Landgreen, which sits on Maiken Bent’s carpet, all of this is lit by a Richard Woods lamp and positioned in front of Lothar Götz’s wall painting.

We made this furniture store using around 20 chairs, 18 lamps, 2 beds, 1 problem, a tv, a couple of benches, 6 tables, a hammock, a fireplace, lots of ceramics, bookshelves, framed pictures and lots more, by 28 artists. More will be added throughout the show.

During the exhibition we will invite furniture experts – curators, shop owners and designers to reconfigure the displays. This is a furniture store, not a fixed, static exhibition. The Helen Frik ceramics sitting on the FOS table can be bought and carried away. So can the FOS table. We might even have a closing sale.

The artists are:
Maiken Bent, Anna Bjerger, Milena Bonifacini, Ib Braase, Matt Calderwood, Desmond Church, Alex Da Corte, Graham Dolphin, FOS, Helen Frik, Ryan Gander, Ditte Gantriis, Poul Gernes, Lothar Götz, James Hyde, John Kørner, Malene Landgreen, Albert Mertz, Maria Nepomuceno, Opavivará!, Torben Ribe, Charlie Roberts, Simon Starling, Superflex, Daniel Svarre, Evren Tekinoktay, Pernille Kapper Williams and Richard Woods.

Kilde: David Risley Gallery