Denmark On My Mind: Mindcraft16 @ Milan Design Week

For quite a few years now Mindcraft, the showcase organised by Danish Crafts, an institution of the Danish Ministry of Culture, has been a key appointment during Milan Design Week. The event developed in a coherent way, moving from the Tortona area to Ventura Lambrate, before arriving last year to a historical location – the old cloister Chiostro Minore di San Simpliciano, in Brera.

Like last year's edition, Mindcraft 16 (12th-17th April 2016) will be curated by Danish-Italian GamFratesi (designers and architects Stine Gam and Enrico Fratesi), the duo who brought a breath of fresh air to the 2015 presentation, scooping along the way a Milano Design Award and a German Design Award.

The location has changed again, though, and a larger audience will now be able to explore the latest Danish craft and design products, this time at the Circolo Filologico Milanese, in the city centre.

As for the previous showcases, the selection criteria is simple – presenting new work by various young talents and established names working in a wide range of categories, including furniture and visual design, ceramics, textile design and fashion.

As usual the choice is wide and fans of the Danish minimalist tradition will enjoy Ole Jensen's red clay primal pottery vases, Cecilie Manz's solid Oregon pine "Sølvgade Chair" and Vibeke Fonnesberg Schmidt's "Stafa", plexiglass lamps inspired by the geological formation on the West coast of Scotland and the palette of early Star Wars films, while they will be mesmerised by the sleek and modern hourglasses by Øivind Slaatto, designed to restore our natural cycles and make sure through their geometry that timekeeping is on our side (the configuration of the hourglasses makes the intervals twice or three times as long when the glass is turned upside down, so that creative minds can take all the crucially important breaks they need to recuperate, process and reflect…).

The cleverly conceptual bureau conceived for the Museum of Nothing by the benandsebastian duo (Ben Clement and Sebastian de la Cour) and "Breathe" by Japanese designer and cabinetmaker Akiko Kuwahata can be considered instead visually impressive pieces.

Inspired by a paragraph by the Danish existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, the bureau is constructed as a place of work as well as an incomplete system of thinking that will assume new meanings and functions only when the user will start working on it, projecting their ideas into its empty drawers and vacant spaces.

Moving from architectural principles and structures, the "Breathe" chest of drawers features instead a glass panel decorated with a frosted pattern of slanting stripes; more stripes, but angled in the opposite direction, characterise the sides of the wooden drawers.

When a drawer is pulled out, the decorative elements create fascinating motifs, playing also with the light and shadows in a room.

Mindcraft is well known for featuring experimental objects capable of stimulating the curiosity of the visitors: this year it will be difficult not to reach out and touch the doughnut-shaped extruded ceramic rings forming "Heavy Stack" (made on a brickworks extrusion machine fitted with a special nozzle) by Maria Bruun & Anne Dorthe Vester, or the glazed stoneware of the "Winter Series" by Marianne Krumbach.

It will also be possible to discover new experimental surfaces or patterns: ceramicist Christina Schou Christensen plays in her dishes with the interaction between surface tension, shape, intense heat and gravity coming up with pieces characterised by great variations, thick ripples and waves.

The equally experimental textures of Japanese silversmith and metal chaser Yuki Ferdinandsen's designs are inspired by sudden and powerful releases of energy and galaxy formations and are created using the ancient and time-consuming Japanese artisanal technique "arare".

Fashion fans visiting the showcase will be able to discover works and creations opening new paths in textile design and installations. The hand-woven Icelandic wool and cotton miftah mattress by Halstrøm-Odgaard is an example of how design can comment and intervene about current issues such as the refugee emergency in Europe.

Rosa Tolnov Clausen explores instead through her "Deal with it" wool textiles woven on a hand-loom the consequences of introducing an unpredicted element – a yarn in fifteen preselected colours in a randomized process – in a systematic and planned design project revolving around basic weave, decoration, base colour(s), decoration colour(s) and composition.

While Clausen works with physical threads, Dark Matters' "Undecided Impressions" visual installation focuses on digital patterns inspired by the fragmented sensorial impressions we get on a daily basis.

The visual installation was actually developed in a complementary process with Irv Johnson's music composition, "… after". Conceived as the soundtrack for this year's event (and inspired by its main theme – " In My Mind Craft") "…after" is a sound tapestry consisting in several layers or sequences interwoven in a randomized process.

Danish designer Freya Dalsjø reinvented traditional elements such as buttons, sleeves, fastenings, collars and cuffs, employing them in unconventional ways and using materials without taking care of body proportions.

The resulting shapes for her "I New It" project are therefore unusual and innovative as she analyses the consequences of the wearer's body adapting to design rather than the other way round.

Anther Danish fashion designer, Nicholas Nybr, came up instead with an installation that celebrates idyllic long summer evenings in Denmark while prompting people to consider the effects that fear and alienation may be having the country.

"Denmark On My Mind" consists in two body-morphing designs made with fabric and raffia. Employed by the designer to evoke fragrant hay and harvest time, this material was woven into the fabric and cut into shape like a hairdresser would do on a hairdo, giving the installation an architectural twist.

It is worth remembering that Mindcraft doesn't only include fashion, but also gives the chance to fashion designers to experiment with other disciplines.

This year Henrik Vibskov for example created two dichotomic installations: the "SUB3", an egg-shaped shell that cocoons the occupant and lulls them into a relaxing mind state, and "The Jaw Nuts Piece", a crowd of disturbing wooden heads reminiscent of traditional German nutcrackers but painted like Asian masks that keep on talking and blabbering, inducing visitors to mental madness, while prompting them to ponder a bit more about the extreme and overwhelming information flow we are exposed to everyday.

Though these pieces are all different, there is something they have in common – they are all highly crafted and combine conceptual design with traditional and experimental techniques. Besides, the fact that most of them can be read at the intersection between various disciplines – including art, architecture, interior design and fashion, but also set design – makes sure that this new edition of Mindcraft will again manage to engage a wide audience across different media.