Johan Ansander

Johan Ansander

Once born and raised in Gothenburg, Johan Ansander is now firmly based in Stockholm. Maximus, his very first project for Blå Station is also his master degree assignment at Konstfack, University of Arts, Crafts and Design.

When the school’s yearly Degree Exhibition had to go online, due to the pandemic, Johan Ansander and other master students made a pop-up exhibition in the middle of Stockholm. From there he was readily brought in to the EX-WORKS 2020 show at Stockholm’s Museum of Furniture Studies.

Rather than looking deep into the hidden forms in his chosen material wood, he has focused on its malleability using 3D-modelling software. Pieces of massive ash have in Maximus been transformed to almost sketchy forms reminiscent of comic strip furniture. ”I have been inspired by theories claiming that we in the future must find alternatives to global mass production, and instead locally manufacture our everyday objects.” The relation between local production and contemporary technology is Johan’s main focus right now, along with a keen interest on how to shape and sculpt the material in new ways using novel production technology, avoiding more rational and conventional solutions.

You have just started on your career as a furniture designer; do you already have something special in mind for your next project?
”I’d love to work with a more commonplace project, maybe a much more rational way of relating to the material at hand.”

What is on your reading list right now?
”The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes is on my bedside table, it’s a fictional biography of Dimitri Shostakovich and how he was both a famous composer and an enemy of the state under the Stalinist Soviet regime."