About the Exhibition
The shimmering, shifting spectrum of color emanating from the nine-story interior solarium is Astrid Krogh’s Lightmail, a three-part fiber optic tapestry woven on a loom in the artist’s Copenhagen studio. Renowned as a leading innovator in the intersecting fields of textile design, technology, and architectural intervention, Astrid Krogh anchors her designs to new technologies by weaving lengths of optic strands into iridescent tapestries that glow and illuminate in a rainbow of colors. The fibers are connected to monitors that radiate the lights in sequence, creating an ever-changing flow of colors, which are further enhanced and altered by changes in atmospheric light in the surrounding environment. Krogh designed Lightmail in response to the dramatic vertical space of the solarium, as well as to the patterns of sunlight and darkness to which the work is directly exposed.
“I begin each commission by traveling to the site to look at existing light, the flow of human traffic, and the general buzz around it,” says the artist, “I set out to truly integrate my work into the space so that it becomes a part of it. Each building has a unique atmosphere; every space has its soul. My work is born out of feeling, yet, takes shape according to the physical characteristics of the space.”
Lightmail is one of Krogh’s most ambitious site-specific works; it both transforms and connects the building’s spaces—both vertically and horizontally—and heightens viewers’ awareness of the natural and built environments. Krogh reinterprets an ancient craft with new materials and techniques to create an array of ever-shifting, interactive experiences that are both magical and mysterious.
Lightmail
2012
Weaving in optic fibers, light monitors. Unique piece made for the 21c Museum, Cincinatti USA
Lightmail
2000
Weaving in optical fibre
150 x 700 cm
Unique piece made for the exhibition at the Trapholt Museum, Denmark
Lightmail
2012
Weaving in optic fibers, light monitors. Unique piece made for the 21c Museum, Cincinatti USA
Lightmail
2012
Weaving in optic fibers, light monitors. Unique piece made for the 21c Museum, Cincinatti USA
Astrid Krogh is working at the intersection between art, architecture and design. Born in Denmark in 1968, Krogh graduated from the textile faculty at The Danish Design School in 1997 and established her own studio the following year, where she started using optical fibers to create woven textiles, thereby weaving with light itself. Krogh’s point of departure from conventional textile design was not merely her fascination with light but also her at traction to shape-morphing objects and shifting colorways, “I use light as both a material and a technology”, Krogh explains. Few artists speak a refined language as fluently as Astrid Krogh, who uses light to describe aspects of Nature that words simply cannot. Her vocabulary is nuanced by sensory experiences, which are articulated through a lexicon of color and light. Astrid Krogh’s works are included in important museum collections, such as the Designmuseum Danmark and the 21C Museum International Contemporary Art Foundation, USA. She has carried out monumental light installations and site-specific commissions for private and public collections, such as the 21C Museum International Contemporary Art Foundation, Cincinnati, USA; Longchamp Flagship store, Paris, France; Danish University Center, Beijing, China; Maersk building, Copenhagen, Denmark; and Danish Parliament, Copenhagen, Denmark. Krogh’s works are published in important books about contemporary textiles, architecture and design and the artist has won several prizes, including the Thorvald Bindesboell Medal, the Inga & Ejvind Kold Christensen Prize, the Annual Honorary Grant of the National Bank of Denmark, the Finn Juhl Architecture Prize and the CODA Award.