“What art does — maybe what it does most completely — is tell us, make us feel that what we think we know, we don’t. There are whole worlds around us that we’ve never glimpsed.” Greil Marcus — Tuesday November 10th — —

The idea is to die young as late as possible. — Ashley Montagu — Tuesday November 10th — —

I love listening. It is one of the only spaces where you can be still and moved at the same time. — Nayyirah Waheed — Tuesday November 10th — —

Stoned by Fredrik Paulsen

We are very impressed by recent discovery; Copenhagen-based gallery Etage Projects, where since October a new selection of specifically created works by Swedish designer Fredrik Paulsen are on display. Named ‘Stoned’ the creations’ departure point is the famous Swedish stone quarry ‘i Öland’. Paulsen has been exploring and examining the unique qualities of the rose colored stone from the quarry and used it as the main material and inspiration for his exhibition. With his series, Fredrik Paulsen is taking a much more experimental approach towards this new body of work – allowing the material to dictate its form and function. The title reflects not only the stone as the main material in the work but the sensory and open-minded artistic process that Paulsen took in the creation of the work.

Paulsen took stone from Öland and pulverized it, rematerialized it and subsequently fixed new meanings and functions to it. A result of the process is a pink surface material that he used to coat wooden chairs and lights, as well as casting the material to form amorphous vessels, with the stone’s color being very similar to that of natural tanned leather, which he also used. In total the artist has created  a collection of two chairs having tanned leather seats and a third chair made from a slab of Öland stone. What fascinates us is the relationship between the rough texture of the stone dust, the delicate color palette and Paulsen’s artistic forming brings out a whole new take on the possibilities of statuary work and design.

In an interview with Disegno the artists on his fascination for the Öland quarry and his first time of working with stone:

The quarry has these stones that they mill from the island, which have a really interesting color to them: they’re red, burgundy, pinkish. There is a big scrap pile of stone dust that’s produced when they process it and I found that so interesting. Everything began with me being curious about that. I’ve never worked with stone before, but I wanted to take the opportunity to learn something new.

Fredrik Paulsen‘s work spans from furniture to interior- and exhibition design. He is interested in creating a sense of community and finding new ways to make independent and small-scale design more accessible. Fredrik is a co-founder of Örnsbergsauktionen, a member of the design group LAST and a visiting tutor at Beckmans College of Design. In the spectra of Fredrik Paulsen’s work, notions of anti-consumerism, artificiality and counter culture are thrown into a creative mixing pot that celebrates material, colour and form. With a playful approach to ordinary everyday objects, he experiments with new creative processes. During his time at the Royal College of Art in London, Paulsen began to experiment with different wood colouring techniques and created is own library of recipes and colour codes to apply every tree sort. This makes every object unique.

Etage Projects is a gallery situated in the centre of Copenhagen’s lively art district, where it provides a platform for designers, artists and architects to explore ideas through: exhibitions, workshops, lectures, and publications. The mission behind the inspirational project is to work with interdisciplinary creatives who actively question received models of practice and exhibition. Through this, Etage Projects intends to enrich and broaden the definitions of art, architecture and design. Next to Paulsen it has attached artists Luuk van den Broek, Sabine Marcelis and Nathaniel Rackowe to its operation.

We look forward to more beautiful initiatives by Etage Projects!

You can find Etage Projects at Borgergade 15E in Copenhagen, Denmark.

For more information on ‘Stoned’ – and earlier proejcts like their impressive collaboration with Danish artist FOS for Céline‘s Spring/Summer 2016 collection’s presentation – see here