Aside from possessing a delightful moniker (try it on for size; it rolls right off the tongue) interdisciplinary artist duo PUTPUT is one of our favourite studios around. Formed of Swiss artist Stephan Friedli and the Danish collaborator Ulrik Martin Larsen, the studio is based out of Copenhagen, where the pair apply their idiosyncratic techniques to the fields of photography, sculpture and publishing. They describe their partnership as “a collaboration in thought and practice,” and the work they produce ranges from the giggle-inducing to the downright bizarre.
Take Objective Ambition, for example: a project in which various objects are permitted to assume alternate identities through their shadows – an elegant swan ornament transforming into an anglepoise lamp, and a curvaceous vase, a pear. Or, more amusingly, enjoy the photographic series Bouquet, in which objects from wigs and shower caps to lampshades and jelly moulds are plonked atop bouquets of flowers. It’s “a crossbreed between function and ornamentation,” the studio explains of the carefully executed series of still lives, table clothes and coloured backdrops all painstakingly arranged. “These bouquets of flowers with artefacts from different object realms concealing or protecting the delicate blooms represent an altered space, where a gallery of personalities have left traces alluding to a narrative."
These creative collaborations aren’t entirely explainable, nor do they necessarily need explaining; rather, they’re oddly gratifying in their alternative treatments of otherwise everyday objects. If nothing else, allow PUTPUT to aid you in imagining a world in which a collection of candles might represent a shoe, or a feather duster a flower. In this case, it's function, rather than beauty, which lies in the eye of the beholder.
Happy Monday! #AnOtherHappyMonday
