Bakkehuset
HÅND / VÆRK
12. May 2022 - 24. August 2023
1801 Frederiksberg C
T: +45 33 31 43 62
E: bakkehuset@frederiksbergmuseerne.dk
Bakkehuset’s exhibition hånd / værk (English: “craftmanship”) puts two crafts – the carpenter’s processing of the wood and the poet’s processing of the language – opposite each other and examines the creative drive and love for the materials that characterize both crafts. The exhibition provides a unique insight into cabinetmaker Teis Dich Abrahamsen’s and poet Morten Søndergaard’s creative universes and presents a selection of their previous works.
Morten Søndergaard and Teis Dich Abrahamsen are preoccupied with play and stories that intertwine and gather in the joy of the hand’s work with the material. Familiar objects and furniture from our everyday lives get loaded with new meanings where a surprising effect arises and thus makes us look at things in a new perspective.
Morten Søndergaard
Morten Søndergaard is first and foremost a poet and has for a number of years lived in Bakkehuset’s former residence for writers with the author Merete Pryds Helle. In recent years, he has worked cross-aesthetically in both installations and exhibitions. Søndergaard has – since the debut of Sahara i mine hænder in 1992 – published several poetry collections and translations. He also tries, however, to break the classical and physical framework of poetry by writing poetry on stone, marble and gables, or even by transforming poetry to music and sound. The interest in the relationship between language and materiality characterizes Søndergaard’s artistic work, and his poetic exploration of time and materials are consistent. With his works, he shows how a text gains meaning through the substance employed, whether the word is written on thin paper, in medicine boxes or chiseled in stone. It can be said, that Søndergaard materializes the language in order to experience it.
Teis Dich Abrahamsen
Teis Dich Abrahamsen is primarily a cabinetmaker, but he also works with furniture conservation and restoration. Abrahamsen’s work stems from a profound love for wood and a pride around the carpentry trade. Few can draw out the poetic beauty of individual types of timber, as he does – whether he is producing furniture, prototypes or unique objects. With his craftsman’s accuracy and his cabinets with ball bearings tracks, such as his famous work Galskab, or mobiles and indefinable objects, such as Kube i kube i kube, he has created his own universe, where aesthetics, precision and perfection achieve synergy. As with Morten Søndergaard, an interest in materials is combined with an artistic legend, and for Abrahamsen it is only the imagination that sets limits.
The New Room
The exhibition hånd / værk functions as a prelude and elaboration of the work with Bakkehuset’s new art space, “The New Room”, which was created by Morten Søndergaard and Teis Dich Abrahamsen in collaboration with curator, Annesofie Becker.