Visual Bornholm
Published by Visual Media ApS
Designed by Miru Studio
The former harbour office in Rønne is the first building you see as your car leaves the ferry and turns south. This newly restored palatial town house overlooks the waterfront and the world. Behind its doors you will find the gallery Køppe Contemporary Objects which shares the building with ceramist Michael Geertsen’s workshop laboratory and with architect Bettina Køppe’s two exhibition spaces: the permanent exhibition and changing exhibitions. The permanent exhibition space is entered through the glass door on the right; here you will find works by craft artists from Denmark and abroad, artists with whom the gallery has collaborated, including Geertsen himself. The door on the left leads to the changing exhibition, which changes five times a year.
At the rear of the building is Michael’s studio which does not live up to what you would expect of a ceramist’s workshop at all. This is where he conceives and develops his ideas with no traces of clay or smatterings of glaze. To Michael, creating a work of craft art is a process of acknowledgement and development in which a large share of the work is done behind a large desk strewn with open books. The room’s collection of works of ceramic art and prototypes is the only reminder of his focus: creating objects.
The gallery Køppe Contemporary Objects displays and sells sculptural craft art. The artisanal quality is outstanding, and materials such as glass, clay, wood and fabric have been explored to discover their limits and potential in almost lyrical modes of expression. To experience contemporary art of high artistic calibre, you must visit Køppe Contemporary Objects.
Michael Geertsen’s works constantly poke fun at and seek to avoid being tied down by the tradition, materials and artisanship from which they emanate. He has deliberately taken the next step from pottery making and merged this with contemporary ideas of design, deconstructing his own background in the process as he explores aesthetic modes of expression.
Michael Geertsen is a classically inspired deconstructivist who loves to take rejected, controversial expressions and revitalise them or revisit old works and infuse them with new expression. He recently did this in collaboration with Hjorths Fabrik – Bornholm Museum with the exhibition Geertsen vs Hjorth – a transhistorical exhibition, 1898–2021, which led to an award from the Danish Arts Foundation for high artistic quality. The works from this exhibition are now on display in the gallery.
