Elias Van Orshaegen
enquire informationElias is a young Belgian designer/maker at the intersection of design, art and sculpture. In 2023 and 2024 his work has been exhibited at Design Miami/Basel, Paris Design Week, Salone Del Mobile and Collectible. Raised as a maker in the carpentry workshop of his dad, he blossomed into a designer after four years of interior architecture and furniture design. In his still short career, he exposed at several exhibitons in Belgium, France and Milan and is represented in Paris and Antwerp. The work of Elias exists somewhere between primal, rootsy memory, and a distant exotic yearning. He has an atypical and intuitive approach in which conveying energy through manual labour is essential. Sculpturality, atmosphere and the sensory qualities of materials are central to his practice.
His last work Viva Shona Viva is a cast in aluminum wallpiece that is the result of a search for an atypical pattern. The piece that conveys a certain energy through its composed and balanced rhythm. Using a lost/fire casting technique, each piece is unique. It reminds us of De Bruder Klaus Kapelle in Wachendorf, Germany, a remarkable, unique and world-famous structure in the Eifel landscape, designed by the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. He started with the frame of the building. Tree trunks were placed in a tent shape and formed the formwork for concrete casing around it. Afterwards, a smoldering fire was built inside which charred the tree trunks inside the chapel. This fire burned for three weeks.