Booster by Simon Hjermin Jensen and Silas Inoue

A natural artwork where time is an essential factor. Booster was engendered by an interdisciplinary collaboration between the architect Simon Hjermin Jensen and the artist Silas Inoue, a wooden sculpture coated in caramelised sugar, in turn, encased in a polycarbonate membrane.


The Danish architect Simon Hjermin Jensen, shjworks is known to our readers for his experimental and poetic works (FIre Shelter, Garden House). His latest project is called Booster and was crafted in collaboration with the artist Silas Inoue for the Skovsnogen Artspace with the support of the Danish Art Foundation.
When two creative minds meet, there is no doubt that the end result will stand out visually and conceptually. So, in the middle of a clearing in the woods of the Skovsnogen Artspace in western Jutland stands a wooden sculpture mounted on a concrete basin and half a cubic metre of the forest soil and covered with 75 kg of caramelised sugar. It has all been encased in riveted polycarbonate panels that allow rainwater to filter through. 
And life takes its accelerated course under this membrane: basically, Booster has a kind of greenhouse effect, and the giant piece of candy attracts insects that will speed up the organic processes. Visitors to the Skovsnogen Artspace soon realise that the sugar coating will quickly break down, whereas the wood will take a lot longer to perish, even though the process is also boosted by the micro-climate under the membrane.
Simon Hjermin Jensen and Silas Inoue have skilfully combined sculptural art and architecture to craft a joint artwork. The human input was to give a boost to the forest's natural ecosystem, then it is all left to nature, the real star of this artwork.

Christiane Bürklein

Project: Simon Hjermin Jensen and Silas Inoue with the support of the Danish Art Foundation
Location: Skovsnogen Artspace (http://www.skovsnogen.dk/), Denmark
Year: 2017
Photographs: courtesy of Simon Hjermin Jensen
Find out more: http://shjworks.dk/projects/2017/5/30/booster-2017.html