Text by Anna Goetz

7 MAY–6 JUNE 2021
Open White Gallery, SP2, SCHILLERPROMENADE 2, 10963 Berlin

In his first solo exhibition at Open White Gallery, Rasmus Søndergaard Johannsen presents eight new works. For their formal design he appropriated graphic shapes isolated from patterns designed by Russian Constructivist artists for functional clothing in the 1920s. He deconstructed them into segments and reconstructed them sculpturally in materials, such as silver, resin, copper, and steel, aluminum, acrylic glass or gold. The decision which material is chosen for each section is based less on aesthetic criteria but more on the material’s very own properties and thus function within the overall arrangement – copper is selected as a basic chemical element for its weight to create the main focal point, patent leather for its flexibility and lightness, epoxy to fill cracks and gaps – so that the “reciprocally connected parts [...] hold an equilibrium”, as it says in an earlier work of his1. In fact, looking at other sculptural works by Søndergaard Johannsen, the dynamic between different elements that together form a systemic structure has been a recurrent subject in his practice – how do individual components of a structure relate to or depend on each other? And how does their interplay or even interdependency affect the functionality of the overall system? Thus, in the series Pivot (2012–2020), he addresses the relevance of the individual part for the system as a whole. For that series, he isolated small but crucial components from complex motorized systems and presented them defunctionalized as enlarged turned steel objects.

The Russian Constructivist patterns that served as references for the present series PATTERNS were originally developed for clothing that was a manifestation of post-revolutionary socialist ideology – the destabilization of the hierarchies, in society as much as between art, craft, and industrial production. The so-called production artists applied abstract art, hitherto always considered the pinnacle of elitism, newly to functional products of everyday proletarian life. Every profession should receive their uniform designed to meet the particular functional requirements for their activity, and to acknowledge their part within the societal fabric – form follows function. However, wartime poverty economically limited the industrial zeal of the Russian Constructivists and their vision was never fully realized. Most of their designs have never entered mass-production and circulation. The patterns have remained the manifestation of conceptual ideas symptomatic for ideological principles for a modern socialist society, in which everyone works productively, side by side, in an egalitarian society in which everyone’s labor contribution is equivalent.

The socialist ideology in which the original patterns were embedded is formally interpreted here. The sculptures are composed of segments – every segment has its very own role within the configuration, which in turn is defined by all its fragments and their interplay with each other equally. In this way, the sculptures turn into metaphors for societal structures as envisioned by the Constructivists, an egalitarian system of “reciprocally connected parts [that] hold an equilibrium”.

Rasmus Søndergaard Johannsen’s PATTERNS pay tribute to the concepts the original patterns stood for and the female production artists behind these Constructivist patterns, such as Natalya Kiseleva, Ljubow Popowa, or Warwara Stepanowa. Although they were the driving force of the production art movement in the 1920s, they have never received the recognition of their male colleagues.

Søndergaard Johannsen appropriated the shapes formally, however, manufactured them not industrially but crafted them carefully as unique pieces – as if to monumentalize them. But although the graphic shapes in their new three-dimensional form appear to be necklace pendants, they are not comfortable to wear due to their size and weight; thus, they cannot be considered actual utility objects. However, they convey something fetish-like, as do objects to which properties are attributed that they do not really have, e.g. by attaching personal memories to them, which gives them sentimental value.

As it is characteristic of his work, Søndergaard Johannsen once again followed simple but schematized conceptual instructions to dissect cultural manifestations or those in nature, fabulating on their very essence and drawing new analogies and interpretations. His ambiguous sculptures challenge not only the hierarchy between visual and utility art (design) as their ancestors did but also that between sentimental and material value – How does the sentimental value of an object relate to its status as a work of art?

1* Flourish, Oblivion, Plunge, Red Dawn (2013–2016) is series of collages of rewritten quotes, self- constructed vocabulary, and summations