BONDING
Jeppe Søndergaard Hansen (DK)
20 February - 29 March 2025
Exhibition opening 20 February from 16.00 to 19.00
Helle Fagralid, art historian, introduces the exhibition at 17.00
If the bricks in Bonding could talk …
… one of them would probably tell the story of a long, discreet life, fulfilling its role as a small part of a larger whole. A silent witness to life unfolding around it, until one June day in 2024, when Jeppe Søndergaard Hansen picked it up by on Pasteursvej in the Copenhagen’s Carlsberg City district.
The artist gathered another brick in Kronprinsensgade and a third in Oehlenschlægersgade. The latter was later transformed into something resembling fluffy, sticky batter, melting and flowing over one of Søndergaard’s ceramic grid structures.
The sculptures in Bonding resemble brick structures – a familiar everyday sight. However, Søndergaard demonstrates how industrially manufactured bricks can exceed their own solid form, for example by dissolving into ceramic glaze. The bricks appear to have been given a second chance to unfold the intrinsic but hidden potential of their materiality and enter into new bonds.
The common theme of the exhibition is bonds, from the ties of human friendship to the regular pattern of overlapping bricks in a wall. Brick bonds not only make for strong structures but also create a coherent visual rhythm.
Several of Søndergaard’s sculptures dramatically leave out the bricks themselves, as structures consisting solely of the remaining joints with (seemingly) velvety surfaces. Despite the emptiness, the gaps, or perhaps because of them, the archetypal brick shape remains clearly recognizable. In other pieces, the transformation of the brick has altered the surrounding support functions, breaking up their rhythm and drawing them out of their familiar form. As a common feature, Søndergaard’s sculptures are created in a process based equally on chance and tightly controlled compositions.
An essential aspect of ceramics is that the objects are given over to their own process and the magic that happens during the firing, after the pieces have left the artist’s hands to go into a kiln heated to 1200+ degrees Celsius. Jeppe Søndergaard Hansen’s practice is characterized by a deliberate and playful experimentation with the balance between millimetre precision and loss of control. In Forbindelser//Bonding, he explores, challenges and highlights this interaction between the artist’s craft and the materials’ own volition and presents us with a new perspective on bricks, joints, patterns, gaps.
— Helle Fagralid
Jeppe Søndergaard Hansen (b. 1991) earned his master’s degree at the Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Design and Conservation in Copenhagen in 2020 after previously earning a bachelor’s degree from the Academy’s department on Bornholm. Søndergaard exhibited at Ceramic Brussels in Brussels (BE) in 2024, 3Days of Design in Copenhagen (DK) in 2024 and Material Manifestations at Peach Corner in Frederiksberg (DK) in 2021. The following pieces were presented in selected exhibitions: Studiolo. Solitude. Saint Jerome, Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, Copenhagen, 2019; Layers & Growths, Pillnitz Palace, Dresden (DE), 2018; Systematic Chaos, travelling exhibition shown at CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark in Middelfart, Politikens Hus in Copenhagen and Bornholm Art Museum (DK), 2018.
Thanks to the Danish Art Workshops, Danmarks Nationalbank’s Anniversary Foundation and the Danish Arts Foundation for financial support.
Special thanks to Tessa Lulu Kaner for crucial help during the initial stage of the project.
