Staffan Holm

Staffan Holm is an award-winning, internationally established designer. With materiality and spatiality as his starting points, he investigates how we perceive reality around us – its objects and spaces, and how they interact with us. In the exhibition Presence, created for Vandalorum, he focuses on glass as a material – its reflective, transparent, and life-giving qualities.

When children try to understand an object, they use their hands – they twist and turn and pick it apart. Like many designers with a craft background, Holm’s design process starts in the same way, by carefully examining a material’s qualities and function. The goal is to free himself from established beliefs about how the material should be used.

Glass as a material is new to Holm, who began as a furniture maker and for the last 20 years has explored the possibili-ties of wood. With glass he has found a material that will let him test if design can not only beautify but also clarify reality. Most strive for maximum perfection in glass making. Holm, on the contrary, aims (in collaboration with glass blower Micke Johansson) to create glassware with as many deviations as possible. This results in distorted surfaces that appear to be in constant motion, phenomena that are further explored in the monumental mirror installation that dominates the exhibition.

Holm wants to create and let us experience a kind of vitality in the dead materials he is working with. The reward comes to the viewer who is actively moving around the exhibition, the one that dedicates time to experience the interaction of the materials with the audience, the light, and the space. The title of the exhibition, Presence from Latin’s praesens, gives an entry into Holm’s way of thinking. How can we be present in the now, in the reality that surrounds us here at this very moment?

Staffan Holm (b. 1977, based in Gothenburg) holds an MFA from the Academy of Design and Crafts at the University of Gothenburg. He has been awarded The Furniture of the Year by Sköna Hem, The Bruno Mathsson Prize, The Elle Decoration Design Award and The Wallpaper Design Award.Thanks to: Swedish Arts Council, Region Jönköping County, Värnamo Municipality and Vandalorum Partners: Hamrin, Liljedahl, Svenstig

^{Photo: Magnus Cimmerbäck}