Are You Familiar With Our Concept? is a minimalist exhibition located in Stockholm, Sweden, curated by CFHILL. Stockholm Design Week’s most high-profile events took place at CFHILL, putting the contemporary art space at the forefront of the citywide festival. The exhibit on view Are You Familiar With Our Concept? featured large scale art and design, which served as an exciting background to ELLE Decoration Swedish Award ceremony and after party. 

Contextualizing art and design has been a goal of CFHILL, and by collaborating with Berlin-based galleries Peres Projects and Functional Art Gallery, they were able to seamlessly integrate the aesthetic of the two galleries born of similar influence, as the partner of Javier Peres of Peres Projects (est. 2002), Benoît Wolfrom, opened Functional Art Gallery in 2018.

Standout pieces were the Octopus and Edge chair by functional artist, Finn Meier, whose work also gained accolades at this past 2019 Design Miami. With a background as an apprentice car body model maker for Mercedes-Benz in Sindelfingen, Germany, he then proceeded to study industrial design at the state academy for art and design in Stuttgart.

Meier’s work explores design as a medium for complex narratives, in particular the theme of The Hero’s Journey based on a book by Joseph Campbell. He analyzed the Hero’s journey, broke it down into seven steps, and created an object for each step. The Edge Chair is the lowest point of the journey, where the Hero must succumb to the inevitable and die – to be reborn in new form. This chair represents a morbid confrontation with no means of escape. Octopus is the last step on this journey. The Hero is transformed and returns from the underworld to his family and friends, with his message: Unity. 

CFHILL was founded in 2015 by Anna-Karin Pusic, Michael Storåkers and Michael Elmenbeck as an art advisory platform to help art collectors, both individuals and institutions, make new purchases, update old collections, and create a dialogue between historical and contemporary pieces. Dealing with both secondary and primary art markets, they recently worked with a major Scandinavian bank to build a new collection in a 900 square meters space with contemporary Scandinavian art from 2015 – 2019.

CFHILL Art Space
Tuesday—Friday 12–5 PM
Saturday 12–4 PM or by appointment
Västra Trädgårdsgatan 9 111 53 Stockholm

Words by Julia Haney Montanez