PAST EXHIBITIONS - 2025

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. 

DOWNLOAD PRESS RELEASE + IMAGES

Cultivated Primitivity

Heavy hand - Upper ground floor

Anne Tophøj (DK)

9 January – 15 February 2025

Exhibition preview 9 January from 16.00 to 19.00
Art historian William Gelius gives the opening address at 17.00


The living room is a central space. Here we are surrounded by the objects we own – living room objects. Many of them are small ceramic articles that we use for everyday purposes and for decoration: dishes, bowls, candlesticks, flowerpots ... We do not pay them much attention, they quickly blend into everyday life. We use them, handle them, clean them, take them out and put them back – sometimes we forget them entirely, they are simply there. 

These types of items are at the heart of Anne Tophøj’s practice, and her exhibition Heavy hand - Upper ground floor explores living room objects. In improvisations on object categories and ceramic techniques, notes are struck, visions are given tangible form, and movements take shape. 
Anne appears to approach the clay with her senses wide open, searching and registering from the first moment. Her work is spontaneous and experimental; at times quick and rough, as she uses her bare hands, at times gentle and involving simple tools, such as a cutting wire or a worn wooden modelling tool. She has faith in what emerges in her engagement with the clay, trusting the process and the material to find their own way. The pieces give an impression of beginnings; a sense of sketching, of objects that are on the way to finding their form. 
The expression is rough and primitive, delicate and sensitive. The resulting objects evoke a feeling of tracing the spirals of a snail shell with a finger or gazing at the infinitely large movements of a starry sky. There is a microcosm in every object, there is greatness in the smallest things. The objects seem to contain the rhythm of the process that brought them into being.

Anne Tophøj (b. 1960) trained as ceramic artist at the School of Decorative Art, Copenhagen (1984–89) and earned a Master of Industrial Design degree from the Pratt Institute, New York (1990–93). She has taught at the design schools in Copenhagen and Kolding for many years. Among other honours, she has been awarded the Danish Arts Foundation’s three-year working grant, an honorary grant from Danmarks Nationalbank’s Anniversary Foundation, Annie and Otto Johs. Detlef’s Ceramics Prize 2016 and a grant from Otto Haslunds Kunstnerfond as well as the Prince Eugen and Thorvald Bindesbøll medals. 

Selected exhibitions: Alchemists’ Convention, Vejen Art Museum, Vejen, 2023; Afterglow. Nordic Porcelain Forum, Gustavsberg, Sweden, 2022; Ceramic Momentum: Staging the Object, Clay Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark, Middelfart, 2019; Everyday Life, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan, 2017; Elitær Folklore (Elitist Folklore), Copenhagen Ceramics, 2012; Mindcraft 12, Danish Crafts, Milan Design Week, Italy, 2012; Statistics >< Ceramics: New Danish Ceramics, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, 2008; Kultiveret Primitivitet: Eksklusivt Folkeligt (Cultivated Primitivity: Exclusively Democratic), Craft in Dialogue, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2005; New Danish Ceramics, Museum of Art & Design (now Designmuseum Danmark), Copenhagen, 2003.


The exhibition received support from Danmarks Nationalbank’s Foundation of 1968 and the Danish Arts Foundation’s Committee for Crafts and Design Project Funding.

DOWNLOAD PRESS RELEASE + IMAGES