The exhibition Thomas Tempte: A University of One’s Own is a form of homecoming. Master carpenter and artist Thomas Tempte (1942–2016) grew up in Kalmar and took the long way from woodworking apprentice to master and eventually became a visual artist, writer, and a unique critical voice. Tempte’s artistic career began in front of the marquetry at Kalmar Castle, and Kalmar is a recurring theme in his visual world and inquiries, especially in his exhibition Arbetets ära, en utställning om kärlek och ansvar [The Glory of Work, an Exhibition About Love and Responsibility], at Kalmar konstmuseum in 1976. When Thomas Tempte returns to Kalmar, it is through the design collective Projektrum: Augsburg. When the group had the opportunity to assemble, equip and test several of the historic machines that Tempte built, a process was set in motion that resulted in a book and an exhibition.
In the encounter with Tempte, we are forced to reconsider the boundaries of a conventional art-practice. Through marquetry images, furniture, installations, and machinery, he explores the role of craftsmanship in society. In the exhibition, a selection of pieces from five decades of work is on display, in an artistic practice where the boundaries between visual art, crafts, and craftsmanship are blurred.
In parallel with furniture and restorations, he also worked with more artistic explorations based on woodworking, often in dialogue with history and with a strong interest in work processes and technology. He built the workshop of an ancient Egyptian carpenter, reconstructed an 18th-century lathe, and in the central work Epitafium, which is shown in the exhibition, he speculated about the secret and legendary veneer saw said to have existed in the Bavarian city of Augsburg in the 16th century. During this time Augsburg was a centre for woodworking which exported exquisite veneers throughout Europe, according to Tempte, the marquetry at Kalmar Castle were included in these exports. The saw was an industrial secret, which is why there are no descriptions of it. Thus, Epitafium is the result of thorough research into how the saw may have been constructed.
The exhibition also shows Tempte’s marquetry images, a technique he came to master virtuosically towards the end of his life. During these years, a unique visual world emerged, often deeply subjective and autobiographical. A childhood trip to Germany shortly after the end of World War II strongly influenced Tempte. The devastation created by the war became a theme that Tempte would continue to work with throughout his life. Among the marquetry images shown in the exhibition are also the paraphrases he made of the artist and life partner Anna Sjödahl’s still life sketches found after her death in 2001.
Thomas Tempte was a university in himself. Broadly interested and knowledgeable, he possessed specialized expertise in various areas of woodworking. In both theory and practice, he was a pioneer in the field of practical knowledge. The relationship between technology and labour, both politically and historically, engaged Tempte and was often the background of his artistic investigations.
Image: Vad vi undslapp, Thomas Tempte, ca 2010. Photo: Lars Engelhardt.
OPENING AND BOOK RELEASE, SATURDAY NOVEMBER 11th 2PM–4PM
Welcome to the opening of Thomas Tempte: A University of One’s Own! At 2:30 p.m., curators William Jokijärvi Andersson and Oskar Laurin from the design collective Projektrum: Augsburg will talk about the exhibition and Thomas Tempte. At the same time, we celebrate the release of the book Ett eget universitet [A University of One’s Own] with texts by several writers under the editorship William Jokijärvi Andersson, Oskar Laurin and Andreas Nobel for Otsium förlag (2023). The book is the first monograph on Thomas Tempte and depicts his production of everything from marquetry pictures to furniture and reconstructions of historic machinery and tools