Our art installations
Art and design have been embedded in our corporate culture since the company opened for business in 1968. Our art collaborations have always been moved by a passion for contemporary art and the belief in its power to inspire us and challenge our view of the world.
In recent years, we have become more and more interested in the practice of commissioning by inviting artists to our headquarters to produce a piece of work in response to the surroundings. By doing this, we ‘bring home’ the experience of supporting art projects in institutions around the world, landing it gently back where it all started and making it into a daily source of inspiration for our employees, our customers and the local public alike.
Your Glacial Expectations
In 2012, weinvited landscape architect Günther Vogt and artist Olafur Eliasson to reinterpret the grounds surrounding the headquarters. This addition is a permanent outdoor installation, Your Glacial Expectations, encompassing five unique elliptical mirrors designed by Olafur Eliasson.
The mirrors resemble ever still glacial basins. They differ in form yet are set in horizontal alignment and positioned amongst trees, shrubs, and wildlife.
The interplay between an untamed wilderness and the serene garden is explored in the conceptualisation of the surrounding landscape. Slight elevations in the broad meadows are small but are clearly delineated with the mirrored oval forms. The piece transforms and enhances the experience of the grounds through the seasons.
Artist Olafur Eliasson (IS/DK), born 1967, works in a wide range of media, including installation, painting, sculpture, photography, and film. Since 1997, his solo shows have appeared in major museums around the world. Eliasson’s projects in public space include The New York City Waterfalls in 2008, and Ice Watch for which Eliasson, with geologist Minik Rosing, brought melting ice blocks from Greenland to Copenhagen in 2014 and to Paris on the occasion of the COP21 Climate Conference in 2015. Established in 1995, his studio today numbers about ninety craftsmen, architects, archivists, administrators, and cooks.
House by Roman Signer
This commissioned site-specific work consists of a stylised house made of steel. The structure has a peculiar inverted roof that forms a basin collecting rainwater. The basin is led out by a pipe, creating a temporary fountain. Subverting the idea of the house as a place of shelter, House fulfills its own mysterious purpose in the landscape.
Roman Signer, Appenzell, 1938, has participated in prestigious international art exhibitions such as Documenta in Kassel (1987), Skulptur Projekte Münster (1997) and the Shanghai Biennale (2012). In 1999, he represented Switzerland at the 48th International Art Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia. He has widely shown internationally in prominent institutions including the Camden Arts Centre and the Barbican Arts Centre in London (2001 and 2015); Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin (2007) and the Swiss Institute in New York (2010).
Throughout his career, Signer has made more than fifty permanent sculptures, mainly in Switzerland but also in other locations including: Trivero (IT), Bochum (DE), Klein Göpfritz (AT), Hallstatt (AT), Nantes (FR), Lismore Castle (IR).
The Triple Folly
The latest addition is a Gesamtkunstwerk building co-created by celebrated artist Thomas Demand and Caruso St John Architects: The Triple Folly. The Triple Folly is a space for art, pleasure, and hospitality, with its form inspired by the combination of three ‘found’ objects chosen by the artist.
The Triple Folly represents the latest iteration of our long-term collaboration with Thomas Demand. The journey to the conception of The Triple Folly began when Anders Byriel, our CEO, invited the German artist Thomas Demand to design a building at our headquarters.
The building's unique design and dimensions are not a coincidence. Anders' idea when inviting Thomas was for him to design a space dedicated to an immersive conceptual artwork, and one of our first artistic collaborations: Yes But by Rosemarie Trockel.
Thomas Demand is an internationally renowned artist and a long-term collaborator with Kvadrat. He has never created an actual building before working on the Triple Folly. However, he has examined architecture’s role in exhibiting art through his earlier work. Thomas Demand is no stranger to construction. He is known for building sculptures of cardboard or paper, taking a picture of the sculpture, and then destroying it. Thomas Demand is one of the most acclaimed artists of his generation and has worked together with Kvadrat for many years.