Studio DRIFT at MK&G to honour the Elbphilharmonie

Hamburg’s Arts and Crafts Museum, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MK&G), joins forces with the city and above all with the Elbphilharmonie to celebrate the first five years of the majestic building designed by Herzog & de Meuron. We reported on the opening of the building in January 2017 right here on our portal (https://www.floornature.it/blog/nuovo-landmark-ad-amburgo-elbphilharmonie-di-herzog-de-meuro-12274/). 
From 7 January to 8 May 2022, three spectacular kinetic sculptures created by studio DRIFT transform MK&G into a sensory experience covering 350 square metres. DRIFT, founded by Dutch artists Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta in 2007, works expressly with experiential sculptures, installations and performances with a multidisciplinary team. At the same time as the exhibition, entitled “Moments of Connection”, the Elbphilharmonie was also appointed, in close collaboration with MK&G, to develop a work of performance art entitled "Breaking Waves": an installation lighting up the impressive bulk of the concert hall exterior, referencing its surroundings and its content, music. The installation makes its debut on 28 April 2022 and will be repeated on three more evenings.
Now let’s take a look at the details of the installations inside the MK&G museum. 
On the large main staircase visitors are welcomed with SHYLIGHT, a light sculpture depicting a still life two floors high, with a choreography imitating the unfolding and retraction of magnificent blossoms. The artists ask how inanimate things can express changes in character and emotion, as “everything natural, including humans themselves, is in a constant state of metamorphosis and adaptation to the environment”.
The installation “In 20 Steps” is a tribute to humanity’s dream to fly and overcome its earthly limitations, in the form of a spatial sculpture in which more than 20 delicate pairs of glass wings reproduce the process of flight over visitors’ heads in the central building of the MK&G museum. A skilful combination of technology with the delicate material qualities of glass refracts the light to capture visitors’ senses with ever-changing visual effects.
Fragile Future III asks whether “the rapid technological developments of our time are really further advanced than the evolution of nature”, combining high-tech poetic images in which light plays a key role, as the foundation of all life and a symbolic and emotional component. Artists Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta explain this labour-intensive artwork: “The light sculpture (…) consists of real dandelion seeds, which are picked by hand and reassembled piece by piece around individual LED lights in circuits made of copper”, in a “clear statement against mass production and throwaway culture”.
Beginning on 7 January, visitors will therefore be able to enjoy the three “Moments of connection” installations by Studio DRIFT in addition to the treasures of the MK&G Museum, the collections of which contain more than 500,000 products of human creativity and ingenuity spanning 4000 years of human history.

Christiane Bürklein

Mostra “Moments of Connection”
di Studio DRIFT
MK&G Hamburg, 
from 7 January to 8 May 2022
Images: Henning Rogge
More information: https://www.mkg-hamburg.de/