ISABEL BERGLUND

Liquid Roots

May 12 - June 24, 2023

TEKST PÅ DANSK

SEE A FULL LIST OF WORKS HERE

Textile abstractions resembling surf sails, seaweed and things washed up on the beach will take in the walls and floor in the new exhibition Liquid Roots, which is SPECTA's first solo exhibition by visual artist Isabel Berglund. The exhibition shows series of new objects and installations created based on the tension between the wild ocean and our urge to control it.

Five knitted figures in varying heights appear in the installation Floating Shirt in Seaweed. They stand as bodies either rising up from the ground or disintegrating to slowly become one with the ground. The coarse yarn and a quantity of "loose threads" bear a resemblance to seaweed lying where the water reaches the shore. In several places in the black and turquoise-green knitwear, elements of black shirts stick out: A shirt collar or a cuff give the figures a direct reference to humans as cultivated and controlled individuals and becomes a contrast to the more wild and organic character of the material.

Isabel Berglund works with contrasts and transitions between the recognizable and the abstract. This also applies in the work Dissolved into Thread, where objects such as table legs and hooks lie carelessly together like a pile of parts that are no longer needed. They are all covered with knitwear in acidic green shades, in a way that blurs the shape of the individual parts. The transitions in the colors of the yarn do not follow the clear transitions in the form of the individual parts but follow its own rhythm. This makes the shapes seem softer, rounded, like when we find glass on the beach that has been softened by the sea over time and has lost its sharp edges.

In the wall-based works, the outline of the works is inspired by surf sails, which interact with objects such as an iron or a gloved hand and together the elements form a whole. The works act as an expression of opposites such as control, playfulness and becoming one with the wind and water.

It is characteristic of Isabel Berglund's artistic works that they seem to be somewhere between the figurative and the more free-floating. In a way where the objects go from one condition to another in a dialogue with shape, color and texture in reference to different stages of the material. Often one finds recognizable figures, but they are always partial elements and appear to be in some form of transformation. The motifs often exist between two states, where the figures we recognize can be a kind of anchor point or starting point for freer and more wildly growing narratives.

Isabel Berglund lives and works in Copenhagen. She holds an MA in Fashion Knitwear from Central Saint Martin’s College of Fashion and Textile, London and a bachelor in textiles from the School of Design at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. In 2018, Isabel Berglund received the Danish Arts Agency’s three-year work grant. Her works have been exhibited at museums, art institutions and galleries in Denmark and in Europe, Asia, the USA, e.g., solo at Trapholt in Kolding (DK), at Fanø Art Museum (DK), at Madoura in France, and at FAU University Gallery in Florida. She has participated in e.g., Jean Lurcat Museum in Angers, France, Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan, Cheongju Craft Biennale in Korea and at several Mindcraft exhibitions curated by the Danish Arts Agency, in connection with Salon de mobile in Milan.