HANDLE

Henry Svendsen presents HANDLE: a series of sculptural objects and accompanying imagery exploring touch, posture, and the gestures of desire - a confluence of metal, leather and flesh in quiet negotiation.

“Crafted from brushed aluminium with stitched black leather padding formed over ‘handles’, they speak the material language of kink. The hard, militant forms of a street bollard or a sword, a saddle and a throne are softened into furniture for idleness and pleasure. Slickly utilitarian aesthetics serve no function other than to frame a pose: the artist invites us to drape our limbs over his sculptures, offering ourselves up on them as if on a silver platter...Svendsen’s Handles encourage us to not sit upright, and in that sense, they playfully reclaim a gay stereotype. The artist has created a kind of decor to lean on, one which requires us to quite literally stay bent.”

(Words by Evan Moffitt)

The fabrication of the pieces involved metalwork of the aluminium bases by Visual Project, who helped fabricate Svendsen’s BENT chair, and the artisan leather worker Kay Symons, a London based craftswoman with previous experience at Dunhill, Alexander McQueen.

Limited Series Available.