Front
Tensta Konsthall installation

FRONT (see modpeople)have designed an installation for the Tensta Konsthall, an institution that initiates and advances aesthetic, practical and theoretical issues that concern the contemporary art scene both locally and internationally.

The organizers of the space work experimentally with curators,artists and designers to create an extended notion of art through physical experience. The blur between art and design and a multidisciplinary approach maintains that the defenition of art or design is no longer clear cut but reflects the influences in today’s aesthetic scene.

Together with the invited artists/designers Tensta Konsthall’s curators investigate the traditional exhibition form and exhibition space. To a great extent their events and programs will take into consideration the site as its starting point and will encourage individual meetings between the public, art, artists and the art institution.

FRONT redsigned the interior of Tensta Konsthall and as part of the project have enlarged the art center by creating new office spaces. In addition, they have created a link between the exterior space outside of the art center that reaches all the way into the exhibition space. This outer space that before only constituted a parking lot, is now being re-defined by a field of grey parking lot stripes making a tight ribbed pattern extending from the façade of Tensta Konsthall to the staircase leading up to Tensta Centrum (the commercial center of Tensta). The color of the stripes is the same grey as the floors inside Tensta Konsthall. This field of stripes is sometimes covered with some hundred plastic chairs that anyone is allowed to use and that sometimes also “disappear” – this way the art center is also rendered a wider physical range. In the café by the entrance to the art center the floor is covered partly with the same grey color as the stripes outside but an underlying gold color appears more and more as the grey color is worn down by visitors to the space. The walls of the room are covered with vines and in the inner hall the vegetation is replaced by a three-dimensional wallpaper made of colorful artificial flowers. The room between the exhibition room and the outer room are linked together through an environment that is uncommon but is explicitly defined. This is a room for the audience, where it can take part of the information material provided on the exhibiting projects and where the audience also has a chance to meet with the artists.

Front works conceptually with design and they have often let external factors affect the process of design. Among other things they have assigned part of the making of design to machines, computers or animals and this way also investigated the design process as such and what the role of the designer is.

Photos: Anna Lönnerstam