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køppe gallery contemporary objects bredgade 66 dk - 1260 copenhagen k denmark info@koppegallery.com phone +45 3333 0087 opening hours tuesday-friday 12.00 am- 5.30 pm saturday 11.00 am- 3.00 pm |
DESIGN FINDS THE RIGHT SHELF
Two courageous women, Birgitte Drud and Bettina Køppe have established a gallery for exclusive design and applied arts in a wing of the Danish Museum of Art & Design. It could not have been done better.
DESIGN As a rule it is both more fashionable and lucrative to be involved with fine art as opposed to the applied arts. At least this is what one could conclude after casting a look around the art scene. Therefore it is nothing less than a sensation that two courageous women put a sign up on their door that reads ”drud & køppe gallery, contemporary objects”, aimed at presenting a series of designers and crafts-peoples´ current work.
The gallery has rented, under ordinary commercial circumstances, a wing of the Museum of Art & Design, the former Stone-room, which for years has been used to house separate special exhibitions. From the 1700´s to the beginning of the 19th century this was the laboratory to the adjacent pharmacy that in turn was connected to the Royal Hospital, housed in the buildings that now form the museum. A long explanation, but one that must be included when a business (and a gallery is also a business) achieves the rare chance of installing itself in one of Copenhagen’s finest rococo buildings designed by architects Niels Eigtved and Lauritz de Thurah. The space now framing the two month old gallery is of course listed as a preserved building and thus must not be altered in any way, so how do Birgitte Drud and Bettina Køppe tackle the interior of this little pearl, with it’s vaults, arches and columns? The only correct way of course - they underline the space’s purity and accentuate it’s height!
Thus the white, almost church-like room has not only received an extra round of white paint but it is also illuminated by 18 white, long-armed lamps, placed high on the walls and columns. The lighting is designed by Asger Bay Christiansen, and a better illumination of the works is hard to imagine. To further highlight and avail of the height of the space, the gallery’s ”stock-pieces”, in other words the permanent collection, is placed along one sidewall in a sort of horizontally divided construction of open and light boxes. A simple and original solution, in white of course, so the shelves glide seemingly into the wall. If they had been tempted to paint the boxes red, green or black, for example, the result would not alone have been more dominant but would also detract from the exhibited objects.
One immediately senses the gallery owners´ delicate sense of, and for space; in some places there is a definite indication or mark, in others one must tread lightly. Both Birgitte Drud and Bettina Køppe have earned their credentials over a long period of time: Drud has been the rector of the Scandinavian Design School whilst Køppe is an architect and former director of Gallery Nørby.
With the current exhibition of works by Stig Persson, the gallery fully lives up to its ambition to present and sell special, exclusive, indeed groundbreaking design and applied arts, created in the multifarious materials available. Perssons glass pieces are formed, by and large, in heavy blocks and plates with holes bored through them in either sky blue or sea green nuances. He is a minimalist with a pared-down expression, engrossed in the large volumes and the many repetitions. The blocks are placed side by side like simplified houses or darker elements that could resemble concrete blocks, the sort one encounters at road works, but they are also formed like corks or ice-core samples. The large holes in his numerous wall-pieces with titles such as ”Holes in the Sky” similarly follow a systematic ordering – indeed one can actually count your way along: one hole in the first, two in the second and so on.
Stig Persson participated in a large exhibition of glass works at the Heller Gallery in New York in the spring of 2006, with a number of other Danish contemporaries. At drud & køppe he is one of the permanently represented artists.
A group we can come to expect much of.
back to press
Two courageous women, Birgitte Drud and Bettina Køppe have established a gallery for exclusive design and applied arts in a wing of the Danish Museum of Art & Design. It could not have been done better.
DESIGN As a rule it is both more fashionable and lucrative to be involved with fine art as opposed to the applied arts. At least this is what one could conclude after casting a look around the art scene. Therefore it is nothing less than a sensation that two courageous women put a sign up on their door that reads ”drud & køppe gallery, contemporary objects”, aimed at presenting a series of designers and crafts-peoples´ current work.
The gallery has rented, under ordinary commercial circumstances, a wing of the Museum of Art & Design, the former Stone-room, which for years has been used to house separate special exhibitions. From the 1700´s to the beginning of the 19th century this was the laboratory to the adjacent pharmacy that in turn was connected to the Royal Hospital, housed in the buildings that now form the museum. A long explanation, but one that must be included when a business (and a gallery is also a business) achieves the rare chance of installing itself in one of Copenhagen’s finest rococo buildings designed by architects Niels Eigtved and Lauritz de Thurah. The space now framing the two month old gallery is of course listed as a preserved building and thus must not be altered in any way, so how do Birgitte Drud and Bettina Køppe tackle the interior of this little pearl, with it’s vaults, arches and columns? The only correct way of course - they underline the space’s purity and accentuate it’s height!
Thus the white, almost church-like room has not only received an extra round of white paint but it is also illuminated by 18 white, long-armed lamps, placed high on the walls and columns. The lighting is designed by Asger Bay Christiansen, and a better illumination of the works is hard to imagine. To further highlight and avail of the height of the space, the gallery’s ”stock-pieces”, in other words the permanent collection, is placed along one sidewall in a sort of horizontally divided construction of open and light boxes. A simple and original solution, in white of course, so the shelves glide seemingly into the wall. If they had been tempted to paint the boxes red, green or black, for example, the result would not alone have been more dominant but would also detract from the exhibited objects.
One immediately senses the gallery owners´ delicate sense of, and for space; in some places there is a definite indication or mark, in others one must tread lightly. Both Birgitte Drud and Bettina Køppe have earned their credentials over a long period of time: Drud has been the rector of the Scandinavian Design School whilst Køppe is an architect and former director of Gallery Nørby.
With the current exhibition of works by Stig Persson, the gallery fully lives up to its ambition to present and sell special, exclusive, indeed groundbreaking design and applied arts, created in the multifarious materials available. Perssons glass pieces are formed, by and large, in heavy blocks and plates with holes bored through them in either sky blue or sea green nuances. He is a minimalist with a pared-down expression, engrossed in the large volumes and the many repetitions. The blocks are placed side by side like simplified houses or darker elements that could resemble concrete blocks, the sort one encounters at road works, but they are also formed like corks or ice-core samples. The large holes in his numerous wall-pieces with titles such as ”Holes in the Sky” similarly follow a systematic ordering – indeed one can actually count your way along: one hole in the first, two in the second and so on.
Stig Persson participated in a large exhibition of glass works at the Heller Gallery in New York in the spring of 2006, with a number of other Danish contemporaries. At drud & køppe he is one of the permanently represented artists.
A group we can come to expect much of.
back to press