Honeycombs and Pyramids: Rasmus Fenhann

One of Rasmus Fenhann’s first pieces, the DanT cabinet from 2002, was created in homage to the Danish poet Dan Turèll. His multi-faceted artistic practice, humour and elegance found a new, wondrous interpretation in this masterful cabinet, which not only includes custom-built drawers and shelves with the writer’s books but also a CD player, a whiskey minibar, a hash pipe and a bottle of the dandy’s characteristic black nail polish. The black tulip tree exterior of the cabinet features Turèll’s signature and a razor-sharp line drawing of his face in inlaid pewter, while the light-coloured ash interior, which was inspired by the whiteness of paper, features fragments of a page from Turèll’s 1974 book Karma Cowboy. With its exuberant wealth of technical details and poetic originality, it is a real showpiece and, in many ways, a sort of manifesto that points to Fenhann’s future artistic practice: the absolutely sublime technical excellence is indisputable, but the underlying motivation is always an artistic and poetic impulse. Whether this impulse comes from literature, mathematical structures in nature or Japanese aesthetics and cabinetmaking, Fenhann draws inspiration from the world around him and in turn contributes to it through his original work. The young cabinetmaker had not yet graduated from the Furniture Department of The Danish Design School (now Royal Danish Academy – Design) when he created the DanT cabinet, but this delicate balance between technique and art was one he mastered from the outset.