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SOURCING STONE BY CARSTEN IN DER ELST
SOURCING STONE
SIDE GALLERY
BARCELONA
24TH MAR 2023 - 21ST APR 2023
For the occasion of Carsten in der Elst’s inaugural exhibition at Side Gallery, Sourcing Stone continues to explore the German-born contemporary designer’s attitude towards material, and reflect his design philosophy. Reinterpreting the standardised use of Greywacke sandstone, traditionally used for the manufacturing of pavement stones, Elst has created a new series of twenty-two functional additions to this heavy industrial process. This new body of twenty-two chairs and tables is Elst’s most ambitious collection yet, larger and rawer than ever, the material was handpicked from Lindlar quarry during the brutal winter months of 2023 in west Germany. The collection of work exemplifies the designer’s desire to influence our use of materials for the better, to increase our awareness of the processes of mundane structures around us. Where they come from. How they are made. How they can be developed.
Making industrial materials hybrid has been on in der Elst’s agenda since his studies. The Graywacke Offcut series is a continuation of the designer’s fieldwork carried out at a local sandstone quarry, Lindlar, during his graduation project. Always seeking the irregular in the regular, enormous piles of discarded sandstone offcuts became the sole subject for the designer’s work. Graywacke, the name of the particular sandstone found at Lindlar, is commonly used for the manufacturing of pavement stones, and for building materials in the NRW region of Germany. When producing stones for sidewalks for example, a slab of Graywacke is cut in a grid like shape. All the sides of the slab, know as the “crust”, are discarded as industrial by-product, and thrown to the side, creating large piles of disused stone. Due to this grid cut, the crust-pieces with a natural exterior have dimensionally equal properties, which allows them to be preserved as unique building blocks - and the basis for Carsten in der Elst Greywacke furniture project.
This new body of twenty-two chairs and tables is in der Elst’s most ambitious collection yet, larger and rawer than ever, the material was handpicked from the quarry during the brutal winter months of 2023 in west Germany. The collection of work exemplifies the designer’s desire to influence our use of materials for the better, to increase our awareness of the processes of mundane structures around us. Where they come from. How they are made. How they can be developed. The stone of the Lindlar quarry region has a major significance from an archaeological perspective. It is the region where the oldest forest in the world originates from. Ancient fossils around 390 million years old are therefore encapsulated in the rock sediments. In der Elst seeks to create something compelling, from something perceived to be uninteresting. Pavement stones, building materials, do we think about the rich history these raw materials possess? The millenniums of generations they have lived among? No, not till it is pointed out, or reinterpreted, not until it is brought to our awareness.
The essence of materials is constantly sought in the work of the German designer Carsten in der Elst (b. 1992 Düsseldorf). Based in Cologne, he finished his Design studies in 2020 and immediately started his studio practice by continuing his graduation project Heavy Duty. His work focuses on making materials hybrid using industrial by products. Through physical labor and obsessive attention to detail, he connects with the material, transforming the discarded pieces into unique and beautiul shapes, allowing the materials to behave differently. The material dictates the design.
For his first project, Heavy Duty, the designer recalled how the squander of energy and natural materials dedicated to industrial processes mostly serve to end up producing waste matter. Through traditional craftsmanship and his zero-waste approach, he approached materials such as forged steel and shotcrete and returned them to their own universe. Soft Works was a continuation of his first project, using the same concept but different elements, such as cork, silicone and leftover mattresses. In der Elst is dedicated to finding the locations and origins of materials, in order to tame them whilst preserving their essence and natural processes.
His work reminds us that there is beauty in components that have been considered less worthy and condemned to decay, beliving they deserve investigation. A essentail part of in der Elst’s practice is the documentation of the creative process, or his communication and findings with the materials. For the designer, the material guides the making process, instead of being subservient to an idea, he considers himself a servant of the materials. His constant question: does this design decision do justice to the nature of the material, or does it become torture?
Both projects have been exhibited at the 3 Days of Design festival in Copenhagen. Now, the designer is focusing on his Graywacke Offcut project, for which he has recovered the rubble from a quarry, creating a series in which each piece is embodied with the same Graywacke stone, but finds its own personality, through form and structure.