Hanne Friis (b. 1972) is internationally known for her important textile sculptures, created by hand using a personal folding and sewing technique. Dense layers of folded fabric transform the material into a compressed mass that unfolds sculpturally in space. These abstract forms draw on an imaginary world ranging from the body to nature. “I have been working with the same themes since I was an art student, it’s all about how we as humans are connected to nature, and, as nature, we are constantly changing, which eventually leads us to death. It’s a kind of processing of this insight, that life and death are connected.”
The time consuming aspect of Friis’ technique is essential; “Time is an important aspect of my work. I think I need this concentrated, slow and time-consuming, but still energetic and physical work to think and, at the same time, not to think.” In places, the material springs from the body of the work, like little eruptions, organic growths. The abstract forms that emerge from Friis’s work refer as much to the cycles of nature as to the various forms and movements of the body. The forms seem to be inhabited by a growing presence, sometimes weighed down by folds of skin.
Friis does not stop at imitating the laws and biological principles observed in nature, but rather seems to touch on its primitive forms in an expressive interpretation that is both wild and controlled.
The mixture of organic forms and synthetic materials, such as imitation leather or plastic, in some of Friis’s works may seem like a paradox. As the art critic Jorunn Veiteberg has observed: “This embrace of both the natural and the artificial is one of several paradoxes in Friis’ art. That her sculptures are both abstract and physical, beautiful and disquieting, are two others... Throughout history, different materials have been given different values. These are not simply inherent qualities, but also values created by
the social and historical circumstances in which they existed, and the uses to which they have been put, particularly with regards to gender. By repeating the same motif in materials so different as velvet, plastic and concrete, Friis reveals some of these differing values.”
December 14, 2024
