This autumn, Danish upholstery fabrics company Kvadrat presented two remarkable projects in the space of ten days: the first is a fabric, designed together with Patricia Urquiola. The second is a collaboration with Danh Vo, an artist of international renown, which has developed into a new idea of multiple art. But let us go in order.
Sport is an upholstery fabric designed by Patricia Urquiola, who has a long history of collaboration with the company. It is the world’s first recycled polyester upholstery fabric made from 100% ocean-bound plastic waste, a term that indicates waste located within a distance of 50 km from the coast and intercepted before its arrival in the sea.
It is a wavy, full-bodied fabric with a remarkable chromatic complexity due to the three different colours used in its construction: a mix that changes for each shade in the folder. “This project was three years in the making, and the company follows many projects,” explains Patricia Urquiola. “They are very good at managing complexity.”
And this project was not easy, starting with the raw material: “A crucial point was to find the supplier,” continues the designer. “The fibres are produced by a Swiss company and the plastic is collected in coastal regions in Asia. Kvadrat wanted every step to be clear, and as soon as he was sure that this was a serious process, he started the operation. A fibre that has a value and a cost.”
On a creative level, Urquiola worked on both structure and colour. “I tried to enlarge a classic sports fabric, the polo shirt piquet. And to give it depth, we chose to work with three colours, two similar and one contrasting (sometimes light, sometimes strong), also taken from the world of sport. A triangular base with a minimum of weight, of relief. A 2D/3D contrast. Getting lost in the complexity of the weave must give you joy. That’s what a good textile designer does.”
“Kvadrat is a fantastic team, they could do everything themselves,” concludes the Spanish designer. “One thing I really like about them is that they seek interaction with designers, both textile and industrial. For them, it’s a way of broadening their horizons, because when you work with someone whose mind is different from yours, you open your mind. And they like working with outsiders. It’s part of their strength. Even when they work with artists, it’s a constant and beautiful dialogue.”
It is in this direction that Trapped in Heaven, a four-handed product/project with the artist Danh Vo (solo exhibitions in the world’s most important institutions, from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York to the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection in Paris), takes shape: a textile work to be used as a curtain or tapestry. The work is closely connected to one of Danh Vo’s most profound works, linked to the father-son relationship and the history of his homeland, Vietnam, which he left as a child to settle in Denmark.
The work is made up of large letters, the shape of which recalls the calligraphy of ancient copyists, and which are revealed through a play of transparency. Read one after the other, they form a sentence: “Tout ce ce qui t’empêche de partir, tout cela est ton ennemi” (‘All that prevents you from leaving, all that is your enemy’), written in 1861 by the Frenchman Théophane Vénard – later canonised – to his father while he was awaiting execution for heresy in a Vietnamese prison. The links with Vo’s story are many and deep.
Trapped in Heaven was presented in Berlin, in Danh Vo’s apartment, in the presence of two key figures at Kvadrat: Stine Find Osther, Vice President Design, and Managing Director Anders Byriel. “We saw the design and came up with the idea of turning it into an industrial fabric. It took two years to develop it. It was a dialogue between Danh and us, we took elements from his art and transported them into our world. A path we did not know exactly where it would lead us,” said Find Osther in her introduction.
Byriel added: “We work with many artists, not as sponsors, but as technical partners (more than 80 projects worldwide in the last two decades). Now you can buy one of these projects. A rather non-commercial operation: I liked the idea, very pop, of being able to buy art at a reasonable price, breaking down a bit the mechanism of the art market, which is made up of very high figures. And I like the fact that you actually buy by the metre.”
The launch of Trapped in Heaven coincides with that of Kvadrat Limited, a new platform for limited edition fabrics created in collaboration with renowned artists. It comes in four colourways: white (open edition) and three very light pastel shades (limited edition), which Vo has chisen inspired by the trees around his holiday home. More than colours, memories of colours. The flame-retardant fabric is made from a high percentage of recycled polyester.
Images of the Berlin installation – Photo © Gregg Bannan
