First Friday: July 2024 - HOTSHOP17 & a Summer Storm
Inspiration & Updates from Brian Madden Studio
“Water changes state, weather changes everything.”
— Roni Horn, artist & author
We just passed the 4th of July in the States, and in these super-heated times, it feels like a good opportunity to pause and reflect on the concept of being free, and to feel grateful for the freedom we have.
Many folks have been celebrating with friends and family, cooking out, and setting off fireworks. In my case – hiking with friends and finding the best burger place in the city of Takayama, a four hour train ride from Tokyo in the Japanese Alps.
I’m fortunate to be in the midst of a month of travel across Denmark, the Netherlands, and now Japan. The trip’s been filled with creative inspiration, quality time with old and new friends, and a summer storm of international creativity.
I’m excited to relay some stories from the journey. This month, I’ll share:
WHAT I’M MAKING: HOTSHOP17 at Ecco Leather HQ
WHAT I’M SEEING: Paradoxes at Louisiana & LEGO House
WHAT I’M READING: Noma in Kyoto
WHAT I’M HEARING: US/DK/NL/JP
You’re getting First Friday because you’ve supported my artwork, visited the studio, or otherwise signed up to stay in touch. Thanks for being a part of this story!
WHAT I’M MAKING: HOTSHOP17 at Ecco Leather HQ
This summer, I was invited to attend HOTSHOP17, the 17th annual festival-inspired workshop at ECCO Leather HQ in Dongen, Netherlands. The 4-day visit began with a tour of the tannery facilities, wrapping up in a giant workshop where a grocery store spread of cooking ingredients and accoutrements awaited us.
Copenhagen-based chef Frederik Bille Brahe took the stage and led us in a cooking challenge, where we were divided into 16 different teams tasked with making salads that could feed all 150 of us for our first dinner!
The next morning, we broke into new teams to begin exploring leather material innovations through a range of themes. My team was assigned an ambiguous theme ‘4D’ and dove into the concept of time as the 4th dimension. Exploring topics like origins, memories, and metamorphosis, we began to focus on celebrating the cow that luxury calf leather might have grown into.
Exploring the passage of time in a cow’s life through a single material, I brought a piece of cowhide into the machine shop and we sanded a gradient into surface. There was a wabi-sabi beauty to the result, and I felt inspired to photograph it, tracing the hide in Adobe Illustrator with the goal of creating an oversized vector cowhide pattern to print onto luxury leather.
But in the process of developing the image, the complex file pushed my computer beyond its limit, resulting in an unexpected glitchy graphic. It represented the cow in a totally new way, with otherworldly marbling and a beauty all its own.
My team was drawn to the glitchy hide and continued experimenting with it, printing it at a larger scale onto painted leather, then burning and dimensionalizing the visual artifacts, before applying a temperature-reactive, color-changing finish to the leather.
Creative workshops are all about making the most of unexpected moments and surprises, and it was exciting to see the team run with this one. HOTSHOP17 was a great chance to experiment with this storied material, and I loved the process of creating exploratory artifacts that could serve to inform future collections or offerings. Big shoutout to Team 10 and the HOTSHOP community for the inspiring week!
WHAT I’M SEEING: Paradoxes at Louisiana & LEGO House
Last year, my friends Shashin & Julia showed me a birthday book that told me my life was one of perpetual returning. And so it went this year, that I found myself with the opportunity to experience both past and present on a trip to Denmark before Hot Shop.
My creative spirit was first invigorated by a visit to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, an hour train ride north from Copenhagen, perched on the coastline of the choppy blue Øresund between Denmark and Sweden. Louisiana is one of my favorite art museums in the world, with fantastic exhibitions by global artists surrounded by lush grounds and sculpture gardens to explore.
I was particularly inspired by an exhibition by American artist Roni Horn, her first large-scale Nordic survey, featuring an expansive array of the artist’s sculptures, works on paper, photography, film, and installations on display, exploring topics like her androgynous identity, tongue-in-cheek writing, detailed documentation, and the depth of secrets water can hold.
I marveled at Horn’s large cast glass forms and inlaid aluminum word sculptures, as well as her photographic installations, large hand drawings, and mixed media art. The collection was rhythmic, beautiful, bright, while also feeling startling, deep, and dark. I enjoyed this paradoxical combination and would like to play more in that space with my art.
“I love ambiguity, I love paradox — it’s a total turn-on! I love things that don’t take you anywhere. You’ve got to figure out where you’re going — you’ve got to be active or you get nothing.”
— Roni Horn, artist & author
The next day, still mulling over Horn’s work, my folks and I drove 3 hours west of Copenhagen, to visit the home of LEGO in Billund, Denmark, a bucket list item since I was a kid. Growing up playing with Legos inspired my original pursuit of industrial design at Rochester Institute of Technology, so I’ll always have a soft spot for bricks.
The Bjarke Ingels Group-designed LEGO House was inspiring from an architectural standpoint as well as its depth of interactive creative experiences and visual storytelling. What most inspired me was the extensive museum that shared the history of LEGO and its trajectory as a brand. The LEGO story is still being written, but it’s been one of creative sparks, failures, resilience, and trust, with a great deal of success over the years. It all felt especially poignant as I reflected on building my own brand.
One particular element from the LEGO history museum stuck out to me: a Yin Yang visual representing the 11 Paradoxes of Management. It was coined by former LEGO Group CEO Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen and his leadership team in 1986 to help pinpoint and communicate LEGO values to new managers joining the company.
The 11 Paradoxes of Management
1. To be able to establish close relationship to your employees – and to keep proper distance
2. To take the lead – and to recede into the background
3. To show the employee confidence – and to be aware of their doings
4. To be tolerant – and to know how you want things done
5. To be concerned about your own field of responsibility – and at the same time to be loyal to the overall goals of the company
6. To plan your work day carefully – and to be flexible to your planning
7. To express your opinion – and to be diplomatic
8. To be visionary – and to keep both feet firmly on the ground
9. To aim at consensus – and to be able to make a decision
10. To be dynamic – but also thoughtful
11. To be self-confident – and humble
I’ll be keeping the paradoxes I experienced at LEGO House and Louisiana in mind as I continue growing my creative practice. I hope they’ll help provoke some reflection for you, too.
WHAT I’M READING: Noma in Kyoto
After the Denmark trip, I explored Amsterdam and came across an awesome bookstore, Athenaeum Boekhandel & Nieuwscentrum Spui. With the Japan chapter of the trip on the horizon, a shibori-dyed magazine cover jumped out at me — Noma in Kyoto.
Noma is widely regarded as one of the best restaurants in the world, and after Covid-19 restrictions were lifted, brought its entire staff of 103 (plus families, kids, and SO’s) to Kyoto to open a 3-month pop-up at the Ace Hotel Kyoto, during the height of Sakura season.
Team members traveled extensively throughout Japan, learning new methods that inspired the restaurant’s evolution, and brought a new perspective to the food scene in Japan. They published Noma in Kyoto to document the experience, sharing stories, artifacts, and the most important– local recommendations.
Travel has always fueled my curiosity and creative practice, but what inspired me the most about this book was the careful documentation of Noma’s creative process, the local relationships built, and the transformative experiences the Noma team had in Japan.
I’m inspired by the way Noma continues to reinvent itself to set the stage for a new paradigm. Plus, I hear they're going back to Kyoto, and I can’t wait to see their cameo in the latest season of The Bear :)
WHAT I’M HEARING: US/DK/NL/JP
When I’m traveling, my ears stay perked for whatever’s playing, and this trip has delivered. This month’s assortment includes a wild range of sonic inspiration overheard in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Tokyo, San Francisco, and Atlanta (thanks RAM). I had such a blast hearing Panos, Hagel, and friends on the decks at HOTSHOP that I decided to turn up the energy. But don’t expect many smooth transitions this month, cause this one’s cafeteria style.
The First Friday Playlist can only consist of songs I’ve heard, received, discovered, or rediscovered out in the world, songs overheard at coffee shops, restaurants, bars, galleries, or received from friends and family IRL & online.
Thanks for being here. Take care and talk soon,
Brian
brian@brianbmadden.com
“We shouldn’t stick too close to everyday reality but give room to the reality of the heart, of the mind, and of the imagination. Those things can help us in life.”
Hayao Miyazaki
Film director and storyteller
