’Stay at home’, Last Resort Gallery’s summer exhibition displayed a ‘dream-like’ scape referencing moments of confinement felt during covid-19. We’d love to hear further on your inspiration for the exhibition. What’s your opinion on the inherent desire to make our surrounding environment ‘dream-like’?

The show was in many ways born out of being confined, or to be precise, from the first week of confinement: When everything closed down in Copenhagen, I became very concerned about the future of the gallery. If we had to stay confined for a very long period, I thought it would be impossible to run a physical gallery. I could already see the frustration of having opened a beautiful exhibition with Magni Moss, just a week before the lockdown, and not being able to show it to anyone. My only option was to look toward the internet and the gallery website, as it was the only way to welcome guests and set myself two tasks: To build an updated website which is more welcoming (it has been a long frustration that the business standard for gallery websites is a very unfriendly infrastructure for the user and that I somehow had followed that) and to build a webshop. So, I locked myself up for two weeks to do just that. 

In Denmark, we only see the sun sparsely during the summer, and have a very long and dark winter period. When the sun comes out, everyone are chasing it, so I thought another important element would be to have your own personal sun. And the Italian design group Mandalaki has made just that. 

These were the elements that build the webshop, which were all put together from the idea of what would be my dream confinement space. And once we could re-open, I thought it would be perfect to share this as a physical experience by creating the dream confinement space in the gallery. 

Another element of this, which is difficult to sell through a webshop, is to be surrounded by nature. Throughout confinement, I was lucky that my favourite flower shop, Tableau, would deliver flowers on a weekly basis, and this continued for the ‘Stay at home show’. There is nothing like flowers that can give a sense of life, even if you are isolated.

With the webshop, I realised the first day that I didn’t really have much for sale which was suitable for e-commerce. I already had secured the agency for Gaetano Pesce’s Fish Design, but hadn’t launched it yes and was planning to launch it during the summer holiday. And I had planned an exhibition with my favourite contemporary Korean design for May, which had to be cancelled (and in the end became an online show). And I started thinking about what I really dreamed of in confinement. I was really enjoying being able to be home and enjoying all the art and design I have collected over the years, but concluded that I had mostly collected really uncomfortable furniture. The most comfortable piece of furniture, which I have been dreaming of for five years, is Philippe Malouin’s Mollo chair, which is made as a one person sofa with no hard edges, and has a lot of different resting positions, wether you are sitting or horizontal. It is produced by Established & Sons, and I realised that they don’t have any representation in Denmark. So, luckily they agreed to work with me. 

The idea of a ‘dream-like’ space can be something subjective and relative to each individual. With your recent exhibition, ‘Stay at home’, how has Last Resort Gallery tapped into what ‘desire’ can mean for a diverse audience? 

The concept was solely based on my idea of a dream like space, and my dream confinement space. I am both surprised and happy that people reacted so positively to it. But I guess that a lot of people have spent their forced time at home, realizing that their home isn’t just a place where they sleep, and that the moment they have watched every imaginable tv-show and scrolled through the entire internet, they need to be alone with them self and their thoughts, and that it helps to have some analog props that helps their imagination and wellbeing. And here I think art and design can be very helpful.

Last Resort Gallery showcases a range of eclectic works across the contemporary art and design field. Are there particular intentions behind showing this style of work and what do you hope to achieve with your curatorial approach? 

My programme is based on a body of works by artists I am very passionate about and the style reflects my personal taste. It can be works that have annoyed me or stood the test of time. My very unscientific approach is to test if I still find a work by an artist who have intrigued me, interesting after some time. The programme is mainly non-figurative, and this somehow blends very well with the design that interest me, where I see most of it as abstract sculptures more than design objects. My passion has for years been the abstract and conceptual, for many reasons. One of them, I guess, as counter-reaction to being a child of the 80’s where heavy, German, figurative painting was the dominating art form where I grew up. And due to my philosophy or approach to experiencing art, which is the best way to experience it is to accept that it is an abstract experience. Which I find that many people have difficulties to accept, even though they accept the same criterium when listening to music. 

My main intent is to share my passion and first and foremost, to show something to my audience which they otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to see. This was also part of the the idea for the curation of ‘Stay at Home’. When we couldn’t travel, I thought there was something beautiful about gathering things from all corners of the world in one room. Recent years have seen a surge in the contemporary design sector with a conceptual and abstracted focus. How can work with a conceptual focus, lead to an alternative attraction towards a contemporary designed product than that from functional products? 

It is very interesting to see how it has developed, and also how design was something which wasn’t really accepted in the art world ten years ago (unless it was obvious classics which had a global acceptance as good taste). Personally, I have always wondered why these boundaries and definitions have been necessary, and have tried to embrace those who don’t see the boundaries. I work with Justin Morin who has been investigating the boundaries between art, fashion and design for years, but from the approach as an artist. And with Andrés Reisinger who is a multi talent who works across many fields, but always with a very abstract approach. And with Natsuko Uchino, who is a contemporary artist who investigates much of the art experience through using traditional Japanese pottery to bring people together. 

For years I have seen which difficulties people have when visiting a gallery and seeing a contemporary art exhibition: I think that many people are very constrained to an idea that they don’t understand the work they see and that it must have a definitive solution or fact sheet. And this approach only leaves them with two possible reactions to the interaction: That they feel stupid or that they can say the work is bad. It is a bit sad. 

One of my most surprising and positive experiences as a gallerist, was realising that no one was approaching the summer show with these misconceptions, and realising how much easier it was for a lot of people to have an abstract art experience with something they could define as design. And I think this is the key to why this field has gathered so much traction in the latest years. 

I also find it a tad sleep-inducing that at most major art fairs, no matter where you are in the world, will show similar works by the same artists and provide a near to similar fair experience. Too many things have become aligned in a globally consensus, whether it is how and what you experience at an art fair, how a gallery space should look or how it should be presented. 

With the current situation in mind, I hope a lot of this will be re-imagined and people will realise that they need new a different experience to travel to Hong Kong, instead of expecting to see the same as they saw in London some months before. Also, I really hope that the two decades of gallerists having their main focus on the art fairs, will go back to creating something unique in their local community. 

That said, fairs and big events are a unique way for both those interested to discover and for those in the business to meet and connect. I don’t have the keys to how to do that better, but a lot likely has to be re-imagined as I guess that few people, neither visitors nor exhibitors are dreaming of being crammed into a traditional fair space for a long time. I hope more initiatives like Condo will appear, where a local scene is presented to a foreign and that these times gives space for new and interesting formats and maybe more intimate and specialized fair and event experiences which are more boutique targeted than trying to create a super mall experience.

Last Resort provides an intimate exhibition setting at your gallery space. What’s your opinion on providing a smaller exhibition setting as compared with that of large scale design events in audience interaction? Are there any aspects you feel the creative events sector could improve upon? 

This is something that has been going through my thoughts many times, especially during the last year. Last year I re-furbished and re-designed the gallery space, and before that I was very much in doubt if it wasn’t time to move to something larger. I think it is a dream of all gallerists (and artists) to have a large and impressive exhibition space. But in the end I came to the conclusion that it is often quite un-thankful for an artist to create an exhibition in a large space, where it takes a lot of work, and often a lot of repetitions, to make it look like an actual exhibition. And realised with a small space you have the privilege to only show the best works. So I actually made the space a tiny bit smaller (it has the same wall space as before but the more harmonic proportions made it a couple of square meters smaller in floor space). Besides this, I would need to find a space in the outskirts of the city if I wanted much more space, but both my and my local clients life is here. 

Bigger events can give an opportunity to experience a much wider scope of what is moving in the art and design scene. My main issues with fairs in general is that I often find the format very far from what you should try to do for the artworks: In the daily life as a gallerist or curator, you will try to present in the art work in a setting that gives shows its best properties and provide the best context to see it’s relevance. And at an art fair you are not in control of what is shown in the next booth, so the context might not be flattering for the work and the only positives are being in shown in a list of other interesting exhibitors and maybe names that will lift your or the artists cloud. But in the end, the curation, which is about excluding the irrelevant from the work you want to show and controlling the context is not positive.