Through a synthesis of ancient casting, hand-carving, and contemporary material research, the Austrian-born designer reconciles the weight of art history with the surreal fluidity of the present.
The work of Laurids Gallée exists in a state of productive tension between the weight of heritage and the lightness of contemporary experimentation. Born into a lineage of Austrian artists, Gallée initially sought to distance himself from the creative mantle, yet his journey has led him back to the very heart of making, albeit with a perspective informed by anthropology and a profound curiosity for material behavior. From his Rotterdam studio, he has become a virtuosic figure in the design landscape, known for a practice that treats resin, wood, and bronze not merely as vehicles for form, but as active participants in the storytelling process.
In his recent collaboration with Edition Solenne, Gallée ventures into the archetypal repositories of prestige: marble, bronze, and glass. These are materials traditionally assigned to the monumental, the permanent, and the opulent. Yet, in Gallée’s hands, the rigidity of these substances gives way to a visual language that is stylized, surreal, and deeply playful. His forms often appear as though they are caught in a state of molecular transition, where the identities of animals and objects blur into hybrid silhouettes. This editorial explores the intellectual and physical foundations of his practice, tracing the path from his formative years in Eindhoven to the specialized foundries and stone workshops of Italy.
Origins and the Anthropological Pivot
Laurids Gallée’s introduction to the arts was a matter of atmosphere rather than instruction. Growing up in a family where nearly every close relative, from his grandfather and parents to his aunt and uncle, was a practicing artist, he was immersed in the nuances of creative production from birth. This immersive environment, which he describes as a passive education, provided him with a structural understanding of art and its demands long before he picked up a tool himself. However, like many who grow up in the shadow of established lineages, Gallée’s early instinct was one of total rejection. He recalls looking at the parents of his peers, police officers and doctors, and finding a singular fascination in that perceived normality.
This rebellion eventually took him toward the study of anthropology, a field that seeks to deconstruct the human experience through observation and cultural analysis. It was here, amidst the books and theories, that Gallée reached a critical realization. The academic distance of anthropology felt disconnected from the physical reality he craved. He found himself unwilling to spend his life with his head in books, longing instead for a practical engagement with the world. This pivot led him to the Design Academy Eindhoven, a school renowned for producing designers who operate as thinkers, including luminaries like Formafantasma and Maarten Baas. At Eindhoven, Gallée found a community that mirrored his desire for a rigorous but tactile approach to creation.
My work completely builds on personal fascinations.
The Practice: Materiality over Function
Since graduating in 2015 and establishing his Rotterdam studio in 2017, Gallée has defied easy categorization. While his gateway to the industry was through furniture design, he explicitly views his practice as more aligned with art than pure utilitarianism. His oeuvre is perhaps most famously defined by his Tralucid and Metropolis collections, where he pushed the boundaries of polymer resin to achieve levels of translucency and light interaction that felt almost celestial. This period of his career was defined by a deep immersion in resin production, where he spent four years refining the material for other designers before applying those technical breakthroughs to his own work.
However, Gallée is not a specialist in a single medium. His practice is a restless search for what he calls the game of the process. He moves between wood, metal, and synthetics with an agility that keeps his aesthetic from becoming stagnant. Whether working with solid Oregon Pine in his Fever Dreams Armchair or collaborating with the likes of Dolce & Gabbana and Gucci, his focus remains on how the material dictates the process. For Gallée, the object is a record of a specific technical challenge being met and resolved, a philosophy that prioritizes the intrinsic qualities of the matter over its eventual function.
References, Influences, and the Applied Arts
Despite his contemporary output, Gallée’s references are frequently found in the deep history of the applied arts. He looks past his contemporaries toward the vernacular traditions of his native Austria, such as ‘Bemalte Bauernmöbel’ (painted farmer’s furniture), which often combined sturdy functionality with exuberant figurative illustration. This interest in the folk tradition is visible in his Orvalho and Arcadia series, where he uses pigments and airbrushing techniques to create layered, graphic textures on wooden surfaces. These works act as a bridge between the traditional and the contemporary, stripping away the nostalgia of the past while retaining its soul.
His influences also extend Eastward, particularly to Japanese woodblock printing, which informs his sense of composition and the flatteness of his figurative elements. By synthesizing these diverse historical cues, Gallée creates objects that feel familiar yet alien, grounded in the collective memory of human making but reshaped for a digital, hybrid age. This blend of the primitive and the sophisticated is a hallmark of his collaboration with Edition Solenne, where ancient methods of lost-wax casting and marble carving are used to produce forms that feel like artifacts from a stylized future.
I prefer to take an artist’s approach to my work.
In Conversation: The Process of Discovery
In interviews, Gallée often speaks of his work as a direct result of exploring different materials and making processes. For him, the creative act is a cycle of curiosity that only becomes work during the brief period of production. This lightness of spirit allows him to approach heavy materials like bronze and marble with a sense of play. He describes his resin work as a process where he controls every variable, color, translucency, and surface finish, allowing him to shape an object from the ground up without relying on the aesthetic properties of natural materials. Conversely, when he works with natural stone or wood, he is engaged in a dialogue with the material's history and its inherent flaws.
There is also a significant psychological component to Gallée’s work. He notes that while his material-based work is fluid, his drawings feel like hard work. They are the site where he is most critical of himself, requiring dozens of attempts to reach a point of satisfaction. This tension between the intuitive handling of a physical substance and the rigorous intellectual demand of the figurative image is what gives the Edition Solenne collection its unique charge. The figures of horses and fishes in these works are not just shapes; they are the result of this grueling drawing process, subsequently translated into three-dimensional space.
The Works with Edition Solenne
The collection released with Edition Solenne comprises three distinct sculptures: MELD FISHIES, MORPH HORSIES, and STACK FISHIES. Together, they form a recursive exploration of animal iconography, utilizing materials that have historically served to glorify power and permanence. Gallée’s intervention is to take these symbols and subject them to a process of inflation and blurring. The resulting forms depart from classical representations of idealized bodies, proposing instead a visual language that is primitive, hybrid, and emotionally resonant. These works were debuted at 3daysofdesign in Copenhagen and have since been exhibited at CHART and TABLEAU Gallery.
MELD FISHIES (2025) is a work of significant physical and symbolic gravity. Cast in green patinated bronze at the prestigious Fonderia Artistica Mariani in Italy, the sculpture measures 480 x 466 x 497 mm. Bronze, a material that has historically commemorated heroes and gods, is here used to capture a cluster of fish that seem to melt into one another. The choice of a green patina connects the work to the ancient bronzes of antiquity, yet the stylized, almost comical roundness of the fish suggests a contemporary absurdity. The figures are fused, their identities lost in a collective mass that evokes both a sense of playfulness and a darker reflection on how animal forms are exploited.
The making of MELD FISHIES follows the traditional lost-wax method, a process where the artist's original form is captured in a flexible mold before being replaced by molten metal. At the Mariani foundry, established in 1952, this process is executed with a precision that preserves every nuance of Gallée’s hand. Each edition of the 14 + AP series carries the same surface weight and presence, hardened into an alloy designed to outlast its human observers. The result is an object that feels like a discovery from an archaeological dig, yet one that speaks to the tragic absurdity of the modern relationship with nature.
In contrast to the additive nature of bronze, MORPH HORSIES (2025) is a study in subtraction. Hand-carved from a solid block of Bianco C Marble, this sculpture stands at 490 x 528 x 498 mm. Carved by the master artisans of Massimo Galleni’s studio in Pietrasanta, the work represents the pinnacle of the Versilia tradition. In this piece, the shapes of horses are thickened and blended, their limbs and heads merging into a singular, unrepeatable block of stone. The choice of marble, a stone that has been in the ground for millions of years, provides a sharp contrast to the surreal, almost fluid nature of the forms Gallée has designed.
The process for MORPH HORSIES began with the selection of a specific block from the Apuan quarries, chosen for its grain and lack of flaws. From there, the carver reduced the mass using tooth chisels before refining the surface with rasps and rifflers. Gallée’s intent was to transform the iconography of the horse, a creature long associated with military triumph and noble stature, into something more ambiguous and emotionally charged. By blurring the outlines of the horses, Gallée invites the viewer to reflect on the animal form as something both glorified and trapped within the material. The finished surface, worked from coarse to a fine hone, reveals the depth of the marble while holding the stylized tension of the design.
The third work in the series, STACK FISHIES (2025), shifts the materiality toward the ethereal. Measuring 140 x 96 x 360 mm, this sculpture is mouth-blown from glass at the historic Holmegaard glassworks in Denmark. Unlike the months required for bronze or marble, glass is a material of minutes and hours. It records the breath and timing of the maker as it moves from molten gather to finished form. In STACK FISHIES, the stylized fish shapes are stacked vertically, their translucency playing with light in a way that recalls Gallée’s early experiments with resin.
The production at Holmegaard, which has been making glass since 1825, ensures that each piece in the edition of 14 is unique, shaped by the individual turn of the glassblower’s iron. The forms are inflated and primitive, echoing the vocabulary of the bronze and marble works but with a fragility that alters their emotional impact. While the bronze suggests permanence and the marble suggests monumentality, the glass fish feel transient, as if they might dissolve back into liquid at any moment. This vulnerability is central to the series' reflection on the animal form, providing a delicate counterpoint to the more imposing sculptures in the collection.
Closing: A Legacy of Transformation
Laurids Gallée’s work for Edition Solenne represents a significant milestone in his practice, where the theoretical frameworks of anthropology and the rigorous demands of craft converge. By engaging with the most storied materials of the art-historical canon, Gallée does not simply replicate the past; he transforms it. His ability to find wonder in the process and to distill a sense of surprise from heavy, traditional substances is what marks him as a truly contemporary figure. These works do not merely sit in a room; they interrogate the space through their hybrid identities and their material gravity.
As Gallée continues to evolve, moving from furniture toward large-scale installations and more interactive forms, his dedication to the 'game' of making remains constant. In MELD FISHIES, MORPH HORSIES, and STACK FISHIES, we see an artist at the height of his powers, using his personal fascinations to build bridges between the ancient and the unforeseen. He reminds us that even the most permanent materials are subject to the transformative power of the imagination, and that through design, we can find a visual language that speaks to both our history and our contemporary absurdities.
