Forms of Belonging

HB381 is pleased to announce an exhibition by the Danish design studio Egeværk. The exhibition follows Egevaerk’s recent residency at the Wendell Castle Workshop, and also features a Castle work, presented in collaboration with Friedman Benda. Founded by Mette Bentzen and Lasse Kristensen, Egeværk has been recognized internationally for their thoughtful contributions to contemporary Danish design and furniture making. They are especially known for their expressive hand-carved furniture inspired by the natural forms and muted tones of the Scandinavian landscape. Frequently, their designs appear frozen in moments of flux, drift, and erosion, embracing the fluidity and incremental transformation of nature: the tides, the strata of slow-melting ice made visible in a disintegrating glacier, the gradual buildup of lime deposits in stalagmites, or the undulating motion of marine life.

Throughout the exhibition, Bentzen and Kristensen’s design sensibility is expressed in sculptural artworks as much as in functional objects constructed using the stack lamination technique from planks of white Danish ash, North American white oak, and maple. In their newest body of work, the designers trace the contours of glacial flows and melting ice and examine the cratered surfaces of natural satellites distantly scattered throughout the solar system, evoking a variety of terrestrial landscapes and inaccessible terrains. The expansive wall work Isbrae / Glacier No. 1, which took over a year and half to complete, borrows its name from the old Danish word for a glacier. Its staggered wooden panels lick like flames across the wall, leaving a vertiginous impression of the monumental mass of glacial pinnacles known as seracs. Conversely, works from their Glacier Shapes and Is Shapes series recall the subtractive forms of melting ice, elegiacally marking our moment in time amid the rapid transformation of northern landscapes across the globe.