"The Possibility of Metamorphosis": opening speech

"meeting place", by Iben From, director at Art Centre Silkeborg Bad.

With Astrid Gjesing a meeting takes place between several of the artist’s styles. First, we are dealing with a lyricist, a verbal artist. Second, she makes her poetry figurative – yes, it may already be figurative, but she makes it physical in visual installations, ties it to the matter, tightly or more loosely, in a dialogue with the surroundings, to make the conceptuality of the words connect to other spheres. Third, she involves the effect of sound; the sound of reading, the sound of music.

By using the form of the visual installation, Gjesing can achieve a stronger confrontation than with a traditional collection of poems. Here we, the viewers, meet the statement and the tactility and the physicality of the work with our own body. We are spatially provoked and through more senses. The physical presence of the works and the character of the material are undeniable; for example when heavy worn shale has been hung as slates in a whole room, or when the campy design of hundreds of red hearts form a floor, which you for several reasons are reluctant to step upon.

In some of Gjesing’s works a subtle displacement of the poles takes place: to be either totally full of meaning or, on the other hand, totally empty of meaning. The important thing is the balancing point. The lyricist explores this field, where something meets in the sense that it makes sense. How much does it take? How little does it take? She may dissolve an original meaning, and with her minimalist actions of repetition she may form a new meaning; she cannot know in advance. The minimalist work method can be seen on several levels: On one level you see her working procedurally with a series of planned actions over time; things she must do, contact with other people – actions all with the purpose of wheedling the structures and possible meaning out of life, on another level you see the minimalism in the finished works, often characterized by repetitions of quiet appearances, cleansed of irrelevant meaning.

In the works, for example in the double alphabet of childhood an encounter takes place between the personal recollection – the artist’s recollection – and the presence of the work, right in the exhibition room. Gjesing brings about a condensation, a contraction and transference of recollection to present, through a toilsome process. And for the viewer, his or her own past and present gets mixed in with the presence of the work, as they stand with open minds and curiosities to perceive an important meaning in the work they are looking at right now. The question whether recollection can be tied to objects arises. Can it also be tied to words, languages and images? And is it the same for everyone? What is recollection and knowledge?

In several of the works there is a circling of nature and nature-given structures. The artist watches man’s inner and the green outer nature’s structures from a phenomenological point of view – and then attempts to establish a meeting place with nature in words.

Of course, the poet, the verbal artist, must undertake and be interested in this denomination of nature’s shapes and structures. Language itself is one of these natural structures, which Gjesing examines, and this is artistic basic research. When regarding some works you may experience a doubt or rather have your attention drawn to how little or how much it takes for nature’s structure – that which could be thought to be nature-given – breaks through or when it is the artist’s structuring that so to speak takes the lead in the work. This means that there is a balancing of the expression taking place. And this is also a balance between visible and non-visible, between suggested and pointed-out. Astrid Gjesing has called most installations alphabets. An alphabet of letters and sound is normally the element a language is made from.

And finally, it is all the effort of establishing a meeting place between the works – and thus also the artist – and the viewers; the beholder, other people, those who are open to it. An artistic will to let this research and this work with the verbal world reach further and take shape. Here the viewers can experience the visual installations as an invitation or a gift and are even encouraged to participate, as for example in the installation Help alphabet which (only) can be completed with the participation of the viewers. Everywhere stories are told; some clearly and some more by implication and you have to listen very attentively. Best case scenario – because success is also dependent on the viewer – the lyricist achieves a universality of this research, which may as a starting point have its roots in the private sphere, but which via the method of processing and the form of expression chosen ends up encompassing even the viewer’s meeting with him- or herself. And this takes place right here, right now facing the work. Hence the possibility of metamorphosis.