Photo by Jacob Friis-Holm Nielsen
Text by Alisa Larsen
Design does not have to feel comfortable, nor pleasant. It can be difficult, awkward, even uncanny. There is something in all of us that is inexplicably drawn to these qualities, something that we identify with. Furniture and objects should reflect and challenge that tension, that nature.This serves as guiding principle as Danish designer Maria Bruun (b.1984) contextualises a suite of previous and new work in the exhibition Crafted Contrasts. Here, she rejects the assumption that a designed interior or object can only be justified by function and logic, refuting the notion that everything needs to be understood to make sense.
Her work completely eschews convention. Part collectible design, part commercial. There is a wild side to it. The boisterous, the emotive, the intellectual, the democratic, all are aspects strongly present in her furniture and objects. Bruun’s designs want something from you. Through gestures of scale, reference, proportion, her work feels familiar yet aside from it. It tells something about the intention, without making the intention banal. They exist in their own right, weighting the specific as more essential than the general.
