Weightlessness – Paper Work by Studio Frederik Gustav
Often in design, the most simple-looking object can be the most complex. There is a real art to this concept of “filtering down”, where only the essential is left to shine through. An artwork or object with exquisite composition and proportion requires enormous amounts of work and small adjustments over time to get it right.
I have admired the work of Frederik Gustav, a designer who explored tension and suspension in an earlier series that I came across in 2021. This experimentation led to newfound knowledge, where he discovered that weighted thread naturally begins to spin and intertwine, providing two parallel lines that give the ability to fasten relatively light objects such as paper.
In a similar fashion to how the Japanese used washi paper to line shoji doors, studio Frederik Gustav has used paper to not only highlight the textural beauty in a piece of paper when illuminated but to also elevate this simple material and find new ways of crafting composition that can be continuously reshaped, modified and scaled in many ways.
When developing the ‘Paper work’ series the duo shifted in scale from their smaller studio space to the open production hall of The Factory for Art and Design on the island of Amager near Copenhagen. This gave them the idea to construct spatial installations that give them the flexibility and freedom to be creative with this unique sculptural design.
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