If we want to unite some­thing that ap­pears to be bro­ken into parts, all we need to do is to place the parts into a unit­ing set. Such is the mech­a­nism of an opera - a work. The work can be a text, a song, a space; any des­ig­nated for­mat re­ally; how about an ex­hi­bi­tion?

The cu­ra­tor of this ex­hi­bi­tion, Vic­to­ria Gün­zler, unites what ap­pears to be di­vided; prac­ti­tion­ers be­long­ing to de­sign, arts and craft and vi­sual arts are pre­sented back to back, shoul­der to shoul­der, all mixed up and giddy. The gap be­tween them, in name, is eas­ily bridged by the act of in­scrib­ing them un­der one pa­role; “At first glance this di­vi­sion would ap­pear to be more ra­tio­nal”.

The bring­ing to­gether of these artists show Gün­zler’s in­ter­est in ex­plor­ing the bor­ders be­tween artis­tic fields that from one per­spec­tive seems di­vided by an abyss and from an­other seem so sim­i­lar it’s dif­fi­cult to make out the dif­fer­ences be­tween them (the over­laps!). The ex­hi­bi­tion as a whole brings to the fore strate­gies of ne­go­ti­a­tion (or even nega­tion) of the tra­di­tions as­so­ci­ated with a spe­cific field, ob­ject cat­e­gory or ma­te­r­ial; Pernille Pontoppidan Pedersen, Victoria Günzler and Nathalie Fuica Sanchez all break down ob­jects tra­di­tion­ally as­so­ci­ated with the ce­ramic ma­te­r­ial - the pot – in play­ful and mis­chie­vous ways. Hilda Hellström’s oth­er­worldly urns evoke ques­tions of what they are made of and why. Such works, rais­ing ques­tions of an on­to­log­i­cal char­ac­ter (What is it?), are pre­sented to­gether with works that al­ter­nates be­tween show­ing and hid­ing its na­ture. Both Vera & Kyte and Hunting & Narud en­gage the nar­ra­tive po­ten­tial of every­day ob­jects. Their ob­jects are more than their in­nocu­ous ap­pear­ance – they seem to want some­thing be­sides just per­form­ing their ap­par­ent func­tion. The artists in this ex­hi­bi­tion also have in com­mon a will­ing­ness to in­ter­act with oth­ers, ei­ther as col­lab­o­ra­tions with other fields/​prac­ti­tion­ers or with spaces; both Aurora Passero’s and Mari Østby Kjøll’s works may be fleet­ing and elu­sive in terms of cat­e­gory (is it sculp­ture, paint­ing or ar­chi­tec­ture?) but are con­crete in their en­gage­ment with spaces and ar­chi­tec­ture. HAIK are in many ways the epit­ome of what Gün­zler seems to ad­vo­cate; they mix fash­ion and art, craft and in­dus­try, col­lab­o­rat­ing with other artists and de­sign­ers, stag­ing their work as events, ex­hi­bi­tions in gal­leries or per­for­mances. While main­tain­ing the body and clothes as a fo­cal point (to wear, to use, to move with) they blur bound­aries and es­tab­lish a new way of work­ing.

Mar­i­anne Za­mecznik