Our graduate Lina-Marie Köppen showed her work at Salone del Mobile and looks back at a great week. She exhibited at our Linking Process show ánd at Unleash The Creatures. This special project was picked up on by Domus and many other visitors.
Lina-Marie Köppen: "we got many great responses. A lot of visitors were happy to see something else during Salone del Mobile instead of a white cube exhibition. We were also credited for the fact that in our show it was not the designer who stod out but the concept. This concept created an atmosphere and setting in which our objects could become the creatures that they have always been. For us creating an atmosphere around a pet shop and a kind of circus storage room was a more important picture to draw than selling our pieces. A lot of people were pleasantly surprised by this way of presenting. They felt it was a nice change next to all the rows of design, a real refreshment for the brain! They also liked the fact that wemanaged to show our idea in every detail of the concept. Even our business cards were packed in fish bags. These details made it clear to everybody what our exhibition was about."
Learning
Köppen continues: "Salone Del Mobile was an exiting adventure. Only three weeks before the Salone we were informed about the possibility to present. During the next three weeks we came up with the concept and had many Skype conversations. This was needed since we live in 4 four different countries while trying to communicate and organise everything. We visited many second hand markets to find old cages. When we did, we packed our car rooftop and drove twelve hours to Milan to set up our first self curated exhibition. Salone Del Mobile and therefore ' Unleash The Creatures' was a good learning school to make our own exhibition, show our ideas and to be completely free in that. It also made us more eager to find different ways of presenting."
Design webshop
Unleash The Creatures was curated by 'HELLO RANDOMNESS' which is a design webshop for one in a kind or weirdly developed and especially random objects or graphics. Köppen: "All the pieces shown in milan this year are also sold in this webshop. In the future we would love to have more designers that want to share their 'weird designs' via our platform. And this could also be interesting for another exhibition ' Unleash the Creatures 2'. Next to all the good feedback we have received, we have also been told that we should redo this exhibition somewhere else when there is a higher fluctuation of people passing by. If so, we would like to extend the concept and make a more interactive exhibition out of it."
UNLEASH THE CREATURES presented a series of objects of uncanny origins and fortuitous circumstances. These works tread haphazardly over the border between art and design, instead fulfilling a desire for true randomness, that rare quality in contemporary production. Through their curious and capricious characters, the objects on display are transformedinto singular creatures. Each one displays its own unique nature, but together, they form an unusual ecosystem, a diverse collection of untamed creations brought into captivity. In this menagerie,a granny in pink neon wanders by a breathing dollhouse; the flatware preys on brand-name logos; and colourful vessels beg to be cradled. The concept also includes a video Unleash The Creatures.
UNLEASH THE CREATURES includes the works of Han Decorte (Bruges, BE), Mathieu Frossard (Eindhoven, NL), and Lina Marie Köppen (Berlin, DE). The exhibition was organised by HELLO RANDOMNESS, a platform created by Design Academy Eindhoven graduates in 2013.