The exhibition ‘The Origin of Things’ by artist and furniture designer Sara Martinsen opens during 3daysofdesign and is on display from 7 June – 7 August at Garde Hvalsøe on Esplanaden in central Copenhagen. In reflection of her own and Garde Hvalsøe’s shared passion for natural materials and their history, Sara Martinsen has created a visual story at the intersection of art and design that highlights nature’s strengths and fragilities and speaks to our senses.
Preserving nature’s vitality and beauty for coming generations has always been a guiding principle for Garde Hvalsøe, whose hand-crafted furniture from natural materials inspire and impress by virtue of their textural qualities, diversity and historical roots.
With the exhibition ‘The Origin of Things’, Garde Hvalsøe and Sara Martinsen invite you to experience and reflect on natural materials and their intrinsic qualities in a presentation that provides food for thought and speaks to your senses.
A trained furniture designer, Sara Martinsen now applies her knowledge and grasp of materials in more artistic expressions, presenting natural materials in a way that encourages experimentation, reflection and dialogue. As she sees it, we have lost our connection with natural materials and their history – and, thus, with our own origins.
‘I am deeply interested in the origins of things, how they were made and what we can learn from them. My goal is to make people sense materials and their qualities. Dwell on the beauty of elementary aspects: the grain of a piece of wood, a particularly beautiful plant fibre or a repetition that helps bring out the value of materials,’ says Sara Martinsen, who has previously exhibited at A. Petersen and in Norske Hus (Norwegian House) at the art centre Sophienholm.
‘The natural synergy between Garde Hvalsøe’s world and my practice adds another layer to “The Origin of Things”,’ says Sara Martinsen. ‘In Garde Hvalsøe’s work, you can really sense the materials; they have a genuine passion for quality materials and a profound understanding and appreciation of them.’
‘The Origin of Things’ features a wide range of organic materials, from wood and resin to soil and plant fibres, and the exhibition contains the seeds of a deeper understanding of nature as the very condition of our existence. Some of the objects in the exhibition represent supportive, stable and maintaining forces, while others address fragile, delicate and transparent qualities.
‘Nature supports us, but nature is also fragile and delicate. It has always managed to deliver, but we need to learn to care for resources – appreciate, steward and maintain nature’s materials – and think about what we are building on and with,’ says Sara Martinsen.
She is convinced that a sensory engagement with the things around us combined with greater scientific insight will motivate us to take far better care of them:
‘By engaging more closely with things we can better appreciate the time that went into making them as well as the slow pace of evolutionary processes that created the natural materials – a pace that stands in stark contrast to a trend-driven mindset.’
The grain of old Danish oak wood tells a story of a centuries-long life in the forest, and the structure of natural stone and the fossils found inside it speak of the origin of the planet itself. History is present in rings and layers. In a concrete and tangible sense, it is present in landscapes and in the layers of soil underneath our cities – a phenomenon that is the subject of one of the most prominent pieces in the exhibition: a timber pantry that brings together artistic material-based storytelling and cabinetmaking excellence.
With ‘The Origin of Things’, Sara Martinsen and Garde Hvalsøe celebrate their shared passion for nature’s own materials – their beauty and sensory qualities as well as their inherent wisdom.
Location
Garde Hvalsøe showroom
Esplanaden 8D, ground floor
1263 Copenhagen K
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