Värk

The climate crisis has exposed the vulnerability of both humanity and the planet. Through pain, however, the possibility of healing emerges, along with the opportunity to create a more sustainable future grounded in understanding, transformation, and collaboration.

The artwork reflects on some of the project’s central themes: change over time; long-term thinking; and a global perspective.

About the Artist

Björn Friborg trained at Kosta and Åfors glassworks, where he learned early on to focus on the craft-based working process and where he developed his hands-on aesthetic. After graduating from the Royal Danish Academy of Architecture, Design and Conservation, he worked as artistic director at The Glass Factory in Boda, where he further developed his own artistry. Today, Friborg is the hot shop manager at Holmegaard Verk in Denmark, where he works on advancing the practice of contemporary glassmaking in both a Danish and an international context. Friborg often works on a project basis and is involved in international art projects across the globe.

Global perspective

Friborg’s free-blown sculpture “Värk” brings our global pain into view through its two parts, which, violently pierced, open up to all, like a painful wound. The work evokes thoughts of our contemporary world, of our fragile planet, which is far smaller than we think – a planet that is bleeding, suffering, and wounded every day. Climate change, war, and violations of human rights leave deep scars, and the clock keeps ticking ever faster.

Friborg invites the viewer to share one single moment, that very moment when vulnerability is at its most profound and tangible. Sometimes the hollows in the glass are small and delicate, like a beautiful poem; sometimes they become an unbearable void, a gaping, infinite wound in our planet, one that never seems to heal. It is almost impossible to resist gently touching the edges of the work’s hollow cracks and recesses, if only to offer comfort and help them heal.

Change over time

Friborg’s two-part organic sculpture also explores the continuous changeability of existence. Everything is fluid, there are no boundaries, the upper form flows into the lower form, transforming it, and vice versa. Our planet and our contemporary world are in constant transformation. What may be a “truth” today can take on an entirely different meaning tomorrow. New circumstances shift perspectives and alter our understanding. Each day is a new beginning where everything is born anew – anything can happen, and nothing is static. Everything is possible.

Long-term thinking

The work is also about long-term thinking – about creating a sustainable future together; about “labouring forth” our tomorrow on this planet from all the wounds and cracks. Friborg’s work reminds us to be honest and to reveal our wounds; to acknowledge the pain and expose our personal motives, deepest emotions, thoughts, and experiences to one another. It will hurt, but only together can we heal. This is also precisely how the glass sculpture “Värk” was made: through united effort in a team in the hot shop, where everyone worked together to capture a single intimate moment – a second when the warm glass opens up and reveals all its vulnerability.