A Kassen
Works in Architecture (2024)
The book Works in Architecture by artist group A Kassen explores the blending of art and architecture in what they term the expanded domain of architecture. It highlights the creative exchanges between these two fields, offering a deeper dialogue that challenges traditional ideas of architecture as merely functional and aesthetic. Through a series of projects, A Kassen introduces elements that disturb and distort reality, encouraging us to see and experience space in new ways.
Their approach redefines how we perceive architecture, pulling us out of everyday expectations and into a more playful, imaginative realm. Rather than just critiquing contemporary architectural systems or economic structures, their work focuses on exploring and expanding our lived experiences of space. A Kassen’s projects destabilize our assumptions about the built environment, adding sensory and conceptual qualities that go beyond what either architecture or art could achieve alone.
By merging art with architecture, A Kassen opens up new possibilities for how spaces can be designed, used, and interpreted. Their work encourages architects and artists alike to reimagine the role of art in shaping the built world, offering fresh inspiration for incorporating creativity into building culture. This continuous exploration of the intersection between art and architecture helps to redefine the boundaries of both disciplines, pushing the potential of architecture into new, imaginative territory.
With an introduction and interview by Kristoffer Lindhardt Weiss
Graphic Design by Alexis Mark and Orin Bristow
Publisher: Danish Architectural Press
With an introduction and interview by Kristoffer Lindhardt Weiss
Printed: Faenza Printing
Language: English
Publication date: October 2024
ISBN: 9788774072652
Pages: 289
Format: 22.5 x 31 cm
Kindly supported by: Ny Carlsbergfondet, Beckett-fonden, and Dreyers Fond
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Artist group A Kassen’s practice is first and foremost an exploration of the relationship between form and content. Beginning with an object or an element, such as an everyday object, a material such as bronze, or something more ephemeral like a puddle or a reflection, A Kassen task themselves with acts of construction and deconstruction, with reinterpretation and re-contextualisation, against the backdrop of questioning our preconceived notions of what the phenomenon in question really is.
Through these manipulations, A Kassen create works that are necessarily meant to be seen through the context of art and aesthetics. It is not so much a question of what happens when these works are placed within an institutional art setting, but rather what happens when we take something that we have come to see as ordinary or mundane, and see it through the lens of “art”. With this in mind, the role of the spectator becomes central. Conceived as an integral part of the work, we become interpreters, creating layers of meaning and understanding for each of the works, as we re-write their narratives.
Graduates of the Royal Academy of Denmark, Copenhagen-based A Kassen have been collaborating since 2004. Since then, they have exhibited extensively. They have had recent solo shows at the National Gallery of Iceland (Reykjavik), and Den Frie (Copenhagen), Sorø Kunstmuseum (Sorø) and KØS (Køge). They have also shown at ARoS (Aarhus), ARTIPELAG (Gustavsberg), Copenhagen Contemporary (Copenhagen), UMOCA (Salt Lake City), and the Museum of Mexico City (Mexico City) among many others. They participated in the 2009 Momentum Nordic Biennial for Contemporary Art. In the last ten years, A Kassen have completed many permanent installations worldwide, notably at Kistefos Museum sculpture park (Jevnaker), the Danish embassy in New Delhi (India), in the cities of Aarhus (Denmark), Vejle (Denmark) and Lund (Sweden) among others.
