When creating his first rug for exclusive Swedish carpet producer ÄNG Studios, the Helsinki-based artist and designer expresses a great fascination for what’s beneath us.
— There is so little we know about what goes on under our feet, he says. The world under our feet, deep in the earth. Darkness surrounded by soil, stone, and water. How time there passes in a completely different phase. The carpet, named Biota, has been inspired by how mountains are worn down and the small thin place on earth where we live. It’s hand woven and it takes about 6 months to produce one rug, using analogue techniques that we’ve turned into digital — and back to analogue.
This weekend also saw the opening of a new exhibition, called Dialogues: Fashion Beyond the Wearable, at Gothenburg Museum of Art, with Bergström, together with Swedish creators Sandra Backlund, Helena Hörstedt, and Diana Orving.
What do you show?
— We engage in a dialogue with some of the classics of art history found in the collection of the museum. We present new works and installations with connections to artists such as Louise Nevelson, Berit Lindfeldt, Rodin, Henry Moore, and the 17th-century German artist Ottmar Elliger the Elder. My work is a dialogue with Rodin’s sculpture The Prodigal Son from 1899 and Elliger’s Krans av blommor och frukt med mittgrupp efter Rubens 1656. I have made an installation in two parts, one textile and one film. The exhibition runs until January 2024 and before that I curate an exhibition with contemporary Nordic textile patterns at the Textile Museum of Sweden, set to open in October.
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