Mattias Sellden

Mattias Sellden is a Swedish designer who practices at the intersection of art, craft, and design. Working in wood – which Sellden describes as having its own agency – the designer’s materially-led, technique-driven and completely hands-on process sees pieces of (mostly) Birch intuitively arranged into compositions that maintain the planks’ natural topology and features, with each form fixed using relatively simple joinery. Applying variously opaque or transparent paints, instinctively guided by what feels right, the resultant abstract compositions are imbued with Sellden’s humanizing sensibility. Sellden’s latest exploration of material-led form-giving, Queen Cactus Sways in Cha-Cha, seems to dance. The piece’s form of minimally worked Birch lengths, coated in an alien palette of bright green, yellow and cadmium orange, invitingly leans forward, arms and legs splayed as if mid-move. Defying easy typological designation, Queen Cactus Sways in Cha-Cha straddles sculpture and storage, proposing a redefinition of functionality and a break in the linearity of design.

Mattias Sellden was born in Uppsala, Sweden in 1986. Sellden received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Design from Konstfack, University of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm in 2013 and a Master of Arts degree in Design from Konstfack, University of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm in 2019. Sellden’s work has been exhibited internationally, including,  A New Realism, curated by Glenn Adamson, Friedman Benda, New York (2021), Plastic Forrest, Kaleido Konsthantverk, Uppsala, Sweden (2020), What Would Have Been, Friedman Benda, New York (2020), Wonderful Everyday, Dotdotdotstockholm, Stockholm (2020), Don’t leave me hanging, Tavern Abrillo, Stockholm (2020).