Salone del Mobile 2022
Confessions
Exhibition
CONFESSIONS is an exhibition intended to address the silent crisis in men’s mental health (Affleck et al., 2018). Specifically, the tension in society around the need to be more inclusive of LGBTQA+ and women’s overall position and wellbeing in contrast to the traditional hierarchical placement of men.
Post Service and multidisciplinary studio TABLEAU curated 14 male artists to explore the relationship between art, design, and mental health. Both parties aim to highlight the subject of male mental health in relation to the societal presence of
toxic masculinity, an inherently female zeitgeist (Harrington, 2021), and the need for a critical examination of the nature of mental health services (Affleck et al., 2018). TABLEAU and Post Service welcome discussion and exploration of related ideas that are increasingly relevant in contemporary society.
Artists
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Paul Cournet
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Paul Cournet is a French architect based in the Netherlands, who works with new interpretations of iconic pieces. For the exhibition, he revisited the Barcelona daybed using a mattress and cushion made of silver-coated recycled tennis ball foam and a second-hand Barcelona daybed frame, questioning the heritage of modern design objects and their meaning in our contemporary society today.
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Lab La Bla
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LAB LA BLA is a Swedish artistic duo based in Malmö. For the exhibition they created a piece inspired by the shifting emotions of dissociation. This comes to live in a mirror, which symbolizes their confession of the duality (and trinity) that lives in all of us, and the many appropriate faces we learn to put on when experiencing an alternate state of panic and fear.
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Esben Kaldahl
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Esben Kaldahl is a Danish artist based in Copenhagen. For the exhibition, he created three pieces, showing his confession of not being there for himself, reflecting fantasies and fairytales, of incarnating heroes without an end.
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Boris Peianov
Boris Peianov is a Romanian-born architect based in Denmark. For the exhibition, he worked around the idea of being able to “confess” or talk openly about emotions and mental health, and how it requires a feeling of safety. The piece is inspired by the playful nature of safe habits, and takes an even more literal inspiration from children’s building blocks, in shape, material and color but also in function.
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Kevin Josias
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Kevin Josias is a Danish artist based in Copenhagen. Inspired by the threshed sentence that “a healthy body is a healthy mind,” he created the spinebender x fatigue object. The piece inscribes itself into the exhibition with a narrative about self-esteem, personal performance, and social status while Josias questions how the physical way of dealing with mental health is too one-sided.
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Jacob Egeberg
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Jacob Egeberg is a Danish artist based in Copenhagen. For the exhibition, he created a chandelier and a plinth, inspired by toxic masculinity, stereotypical traits and social anxiety. The chandelier can be an elegant and appealing object of desire, a measure of success, or simply another car crush. The pieces represent an opportunity for a backseat confession or simply the perfect symbol of a mid-life crisis.
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Willem Van Hooff
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Willem van Hooff is a Dutch artist based in Eindhoven. For the exhibition, he was inspired by how we as humans always doubt ourselves and never feel that we are good enough or do enough. In his confession, he expresses his own insecure feelings with a trophy, which is something to celebrate with, symbolizing the moment he started to accept the demon in the back of his mind.
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Kim Lenshcow
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Kim Lenshcow is a Danish architect based in Copenhagen. For CONFESSIONS he created a “throne” built out of biodegradable plastic, inspired by how boys are brought up to put on a mask and not show emotions, and he sees this man as only half a man. He reflects that the power represented by this masculinity is in truth a corrosive commitment to never appearing fragile; it is conditioned on a repression of real emotion.
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Bram Vanderbeke
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Bram Vanderbeke is a Belgian artist based in Ghent. For the exhibition, he created a series of aluminum reflectors. These come to life in abstract wall sculptures with a mirroring inside the space - introverted mirrors that sometimes give a glimpse of a reflection and a limited view of oneself. In this way, they work as a metaphor for self- reflection.
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Oliver Sundqvist
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Oliver Sundqvist is a Danish artist based in Copenhagen. For the exhibition, he created a parasol-esque object. The piece reflects how we open up and close to new possibilities, how we get hurt, try to protect ourselves, how we seek new beginnings, feel like outsiders, try to fix issues and finally find the right place in the world.
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Laurids Gallée
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Laurids Gallée is an Austrian artist based in the Netherlands. Inspired by the ability of accepting help, empathy and care from others, he created a mirror featuring a monkey in an odd position that seems to be inspecting a blanket or holding it up for someone else, symbolizing warmth and protection, or a gesture of friendship.
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Leo Maher
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Leo Maher is a British artist based in the Netherlands. For the exhibition, he created a piece inspired by The Ice Fish, which adapted for survival in the harshest of earth’s climates and would die if it were to stray into warmer water. The piece attempts to allegorize toxic heteropatriarchal ideals of masculinity; where men can adapt and develop a new code to discover their identity away from the bygone norms of breadwinners and impossible strength.
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Arnaud Eubelen
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Arnaud Eubelen is a Belgian designer based in Brussels. For the exhibition, he created two pieces, After (long seat) and Vice Caché (cabinet). His aim with the long seat was to create a piece showing comfort and non-comfort, inspired by revelation, self-learning and relaxation, while the cabinet was inspired by the differences between being private and the urge to reveal and share the truth.
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Alexander Kirkeby
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Alexander Kirkeby is a Danish artist based in Århus. For the exhibition, he created Morphed State Vessel #1, #2 and #3. His pieces are inspired by anxiety and how logic is anxiety’s weakest opponent, but still free-flowing lumps of fear can penetrate the logic sometimes.
Resources
- Resource 01: Men's Mental Health: Social Determinants and Implications for Services (Affleck et al., 2018)
- Resource 02: What is “Toxic Masculinity” and Why Does it Matter? (Harrington, 2021)
- Resource 03: “Real Men Don’t”: Constructions of Masculinity and Inadvertent Harm in Public Health Interventions (Fleming et al., 2014)
- Resource 04: Understanding the effects of materiality on mental health (Malafouris, 2019)
Gallery