Madisyn Zabel exhibits at 3 Days of Design, Copenhagen

This June, Canberra-based glass artist Madisyn Zabel will exhibit original glass sculpture at 3 Days of Design, Scandinavia's most prestigious annual design festival as part of Latitude: 55°N Meets 12°S. The group exhibition will be curated by Sydney-based Claire Delmar, marking her first exhibition of contemporary art and collectible design in Europe. 

 

The exhibition brings together leading and emerging Australian and Northern European artists and designers around a single, deceptively simple subject: light. From Copenhagen's low winter glow to the high-contrast intensity of the southern hemisphere sun, the works translate latitude into material experience; original glass sculpture that refracts and reflects, textiles that hold softness and shadow, surfaces that absorb or scatter. It is a rare opportunity to see contemporary Australian art in conversation with some of the most significant voices in European design.

 

Now in its 13th year, 3 Days of Design has grown from a small Nordhavn warehouse event into the defining design festival of Northern Europe, drawing international art collectors, designers and tastemakers to Copenhagen each June.

Madisyn Zabel is an Australian based artist on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country (Canberra) and represented by  Melbourne contemporary art gallery Otomys.

 

Working in original glass sculpture, Zabel approaches the material as both subject and instrument, manipulating external surfaces and internal planes of colour to explore the boundary between two and three dimensions, and between what is seen and what is sensed.

 

Her sculptural glass work centres on the material's inherent duality: its transparency and opacity, its capacity to hold colour while dissolving form. Each original artwork occupies a liminal space, responsive to shifting light, prompting sustained reflection on perception and materiality. 

 

The contrast between machined and hand-finished surfaces deepens this effect. As natural and artificial light moves through a space, the works shift. Nothing performs or explains. The glass simply is, and changes with everything around it.