Peter Opsvik (1939-2024)
Peter Opsvik is an industrial designer with training at the Bergen College of Applied Art and the State College of Applied Art in Oslo. He is the founder of Peter Opsvik AS, a design studio located in central Oslo, where he works together with a team of seven colleagues.
To define Opsvik as just a designer would be an understatement, given that throughout his life he has sought to develop a new philosophy regarding the way of sitting, trying to overcome stereotypes to create unconventional chairs that challenge the rules relating to correct posture. His work has always focused on creating revolutionary products, rather than simply creating variations on existing Scandinavian designs. To this end, Peter Opsvik AS has been collaborating with HÅG since 1974, making a significant contribution to the philosophy on which Flokk bases its business.
The chairs designed by Opsvik follow the movement of the human body in every movement, accompanying it in the search for the most comfortable posture, becoming true expressions of the concept of ergonomics.
WORKS
Lounge chair model “Hands”
Manufactured by Cylindra AS
Designed in Norway, 1986
Produced in 1994
Solid pine wood and green cotton upholstery
Measurements
60 ø cm x 130 (H) cm
Seat: 45 cm
Condition
Wear consistent in age and use.
Little scratches in wood
Provenance
Private Collection, Oslo
Details
Designer signature “Peter Opsvik” on side
Text by Cylindra Gallery :
Sculpture or furniture?
Peter Opsvik explains: “At home in the "hall" we have a chair called "Embrace", which I use for about a minute each day when putting on or taking off my shoes. Naturally, it is more important that this chair embrace me and bid me welcome home than that it should have ergonomic qualities. Could this be a form of functionalism too?
The same would apply if I placed the chair "Hands" in the same place. It would stretch its hands into the air and perhaps tear its hair when I come home.”
In 1984, a small company that manufactures barrels asked Peter Opsvik to look at the possibility of developing furniture using their know-how as barrel manufacturers.
Opsvik chose to abandon the barrel form, and proposed gluing staves into straight cylinders of various dimensions, and these wooden cylinders made it possible for him to express form more freely than he had been able to with earlier furniture objects.
Two years' work on this culminated in the exhibition "Tre dimensjoner - skulptur eller møbel" "Three dimensions – Sculptor or Furniture" at the Museum of Applied Art in Oslo, Summer 1986.
Exhibition, Museum of Applied Art, Oslo, 1986
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