20 / 10 / 2025

aarticles and the texture of understanding

aarticles began as a space to gather things that speak through their making. Founded by Kasia Sznajder and Fred Aartun, it reflects a shared attention to material life; to how objects record gesture, and how use becomes part of form.

“It started quite simply,” Kasia recalls. “Fred was thinking about a name for a future project. He came up with aarticles, and from there, we began to imagine what it could be. It all happened very naturally, with dreaming ideas and things we felt passionate about.”

Posted in Art

That sense of ease carries into the project itself; what emerged is a kind of material conversation, shaped by the pair’s parallel sensibilities. “We both love objects and have a habit of collecting them,” Kasia says. “I’m drawn to discovering new artists and makers, and I quickly fall in love with someone’s expression and approach. Fred has a beautiful eye for things and knows how to bring them together in a space.”

Each maker within aarticles approaches matter as a form of thought. A vessel by Nick Kourtzis, formed in Greece around 1950, sits beside new works by Agnieszka Owsiany, Christian+Jade, and J. Hannah. Together they form a continuity that crosses generations and geographies, suggesting that ideas can live within texture as much as language. A surface might carry intention; a contour might recall a moment of resistance, or release.

Their outlook is shaped by artists who lived within their work: Georgia O’Keeffe, J.B. Blunk, Lina Bo Bardi, and Isamu Noguchi, among others. The influence of these figures is as ethical as they are visual; each treated the home or studio as a site where form and thought could evolve side by side. This approach aligns with aarticles’ belief that craft is not a fixed aesthetic, but a method of enquiry; shaping wood, clay, or metal becomes a way of testing perception, how understanding can be formed through making itself.

“We also know so many talented people,” Kasia explains, “but it’s not always easy to find out where to buy their work. It felt like something we ourselves were missing.” Out of that gap grew a project formed in intimacy, extending outward through exchange. It is a small collection, a growing archive, and a way of keeping attention alive.

In this sense, aarticles functions as an ecology of making. It restores the link between hand and mind, and asks what it means to live among things that have been truly considered. Its spirit carries a certain rigour, a belief that materials respond to attention and hold their own form of intelligence, one that discloses itself slowly in the act of making and living with things.

aarticles will continue to evolve in its own time, shaped by the same attentiveness that defines the work it presents. It proposes that knowledge is not separate from material practice, but rather, shaped by it.

(Collection 01 is currently on view at Blēo, Copenhagen. Photography by Fred Aartun.)