Text & Artist Photography: Christian Cervantes
Exhibition Photography: Belvedere Museum
What is growth for you?
If something is to grow and expand, the foundation must be solid. I see the first chair in the series "The Brico Chair" as the seed and foundation for the expansion of my "Brico family," and I get excited every time a new product is added to the family. It has taken a little over a year to establish The Brico Concept and another year to conceive the first family members so that the furniture fits together like a common thread and forms an immensely complex system of interwoven elements, which is now finally in place. From here, the family can now grow and expand in many directions. We see it as the first diverse chair in the world because its made from many different types of wood, and that actually makes it stron-ger: Like when a diverse group of people work together the end result becomes stronger because you have many different approaches to a task. Diversity might be on the top of peoples mind for many reasons, but for me we should be diverse because it makes us all stronger:
What keeps you grounded?
I live in the city, and my friends call me a "City boy" because I love the city's vibe, especially in the summer when everyone is out, and you can hear the buzz of happy people. When I go out during the day, I enjoy people-watching, just sitting on a bench and observing peo-ple, and that way, I get inspired, which I find incredibly invig-orating. I go out especially at night because the sound is different, it's dark, and that's where I think clearly. Here, I create the ideas that I then execute during the day.
How does nature influence your creative process?
Last year, I was in Iceland, and there I had to surrender; it was magnificent with its nature, volcanoes, etc., and everything was on a grand scale. There, I felt tiny...I have absolutely no interest in nature as a form; in fact, I find it boring. The older I get, and as all my peers have summer houses and escape the city, I cling to it because I always become restless in nature. Perhaps it's because I live in Denmark where everything is flat. I love the parks in the city, where there are people and a pulse. I love buildings, Copenhagen has a lot of architecture from the last three centuries and that inspires me everyday when I walk around in town.
What is a book that has inspired you?
I primarily read non-fiction literature, and I love looking at the pictures! I have a huge collection of books on archi-tecture, design, and especially art. I love comics and have been collecting them since I was very young. It's the images that interest me; the plot is completely irrelevant to me.
My favourite book must be Baudelaire's world-famous masterpiece, the poetry collection Les Fleurs du Mal (1857), directly translated as "The Flowers of Evil." I have a version translated by Sigurd Swane titled "The Flowers of Sin," which I found in an antiquarian shop and received as a gift from a lover: When the poem is read aloud in French, a sound effect emerges in the language that emphasizes what the poem is about, and that affects me. This is where I dream of Paris and the French language; who knows, maybe one day I will live in Paris.
By the way, I'm currently working on a comic that is a kind of creation story where I physically move through the history of art, design, and architecture from the early Egyptians, but there's plenty of vitality and power in it, in an erotic and sensual way.
The starting point for everything I do is through drawing; it's where I create and refine everything I make.
What is your favorite plant?
I have a great fondness for cacti because they are sculptural and come in thousands of fascinating shapes. I like that they have a clear and recognizable form, whereas many plants, to me, look like a bit of a mess; they always seem a bit off in their shape, hehe. And I always forget to water them, so cacti suit me better: I have plenty of them on my balcony. They are suitably unruly and just grow away, but in a wild way.
