For a while now I’ve been admiring the work of Norwegian textile artist Hanne Friis. Her sculptures are created by gathering and bunching various materials (latex gloves, stockings, denim) into these sumptuous, undulating shapes.
There’s a bodily aspect to all her sculptures, particularly her work with velvet. When I first saw these works I was reminded of tripe and various other entrails (time spent training as a butcher has imprinted these textures on my mind) but the more I look the less I see guts and gore, and the more I see the sculptures as an embodiment of a sexual desire or tension, heightened by the connotations of the materials – velvet, latex and stockings.
Friis’s newest work ‘Dark Structures’ takes a slightly different path, as the artist suspends hand cut synthetic rubber from ceiling to floor. The black fabric is cut in such a way that it takes on the appearance of netting, or perhaps seaweed; the drapery of which suggests some kind of shrouded figure in the negative space.
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