Mattias Sellden‘s works (1986) fit in at the boundary that divides art from design, which is very often abyssal but just as often subtle and labile. Indeed, the Swedish designer-artist makes works that oscillate between sculpture and functional object. He himself says he “makes dysfunctional furniture that could be mistaken for sculpture,” but these could easily be the opposite, sculptures that can acquire a certain functionality. Sellden’s unique pieces are made entirely of wood (mostly birch) respecting what are the natural forms of the material but, at the same time, handling and modifying it with colorful and playful paints, sometimes glossy sometimes matte.

The assembly process that Mattias Sellden performs with the wooden pieces leads to an anthropomorphic appearance with alien features, also dictated by saturated colors such as green, purple, red and orange. The proposed forms come alive with a certain vitality and hark back to a primitive imagery that the viewer feels familiar with. Sellden in fact leans on the neo-primitive style of Andrea Branzi but, unlike the Italian designer, a greater dynamism emerges in his works that tends toward a graphic aspect. From a frontal view in fact, as well as from his sketches, it is possible to recognize those forms typical of Japanese or Chinese ideograms. However, the rigidity of the latter is charged with an expressionism typical of the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat, in which a subtle parallelism with Sellden’s works can be seen. Those sketch-like strokes, those sometimes broken sometimes softer lines that Basquiat inserted in his street and wall works, are now taken up by the Swedish designer in a sculptural key, with a less crude and more concrete approach.
Mattias Sellden’s works, which at first glance appear as abstract and dysfunctional, are able to return in an immediate second, functionality and humanizing sensibility, leading the viewer to dwell in a limbo that lies between mere contemplation and the possibility of use.

Courtesy by Mattias Sellden