Parallel Ecologies
Vilde Eskedal
S O L O S H O W
4.5.2024 / 25.5.2024
PARALLEL ECOLOGIES
“In my artistic practice, I focus on the encounters between material and the body, which takes shape within visual arts, sculpture, textiles, and performance. The creative processes are explorations where materials and their inherent properties are viewed as actors and co-creators, making the works unpredictable, spontaneous, and intuitive. The artworks bear clear traces of these interactions, and in the paintings and sculptures, one can see imprints of the body, breath, and chemical reactions facilitated on the surfaces. A recurring theme is the ambivalence between the repulsive and the attractive, in organic and human-made materials.
Plastic Ecology is an overarching concept in my practice that primarily examines contrasts and similarities between organic and naturally created textures, forms, and phenomena reflected in acrylic, plastic, and oil-based materials over time. The colour palette reflects the vibrant hues from toy advertisements from the early 2000s but also plays with the coloration found in amphibians and insects. The works are an exploration of variousorganic and inorganic compositions and configurations of materials in sculpture and visual arts. Themes such as consumerism, ecosystems, and sustainability in the Anthropocene are prevalent.
The physical works are constructed from trash and objects collected along the beaches and in the forest. These objects become like the innards of a creature, where the form and structure of the sculpture emerge from the objects, draped over with the remaining materials. Building materials such as foam, insulation, XPS, and other remnants amalgamate with the trash through layers of clay, varnish, glue, and paint. Selected works are then placed in site-specific installations of their habitats, with reference to traditions in natural history museums. The organisms are given Greek andLatin names, describing their characteristics and providing a nod to their origin. Further exploration of these organisms is conducted through performance, text, drawing, video, and graphics with references to scientific traditions. Plastic Ecology explores the boundary between fiction and fact, the physical and the digital, and plays on the unease of anthropocentrism, mixed with the joy of studying nature and its mechanisms”.
TAPIIAL VIRTUAL GALLERY
