Anna Sagström
Wednesday, 18 April 2012
Work from her oeuvre.
“Sound, light, plaster, yarn, cassette tape, wood, tar, image, text, concrete and fur, are all materials we have an experience of. We have touched them, felt them and we know how to relate to them, whether it is an experience of a solid material such as concrete or an ephemeral material such as sound. That inherent experience allows us to approach the works on a subconscious, more physical way, and this non-linguistic communication is central to my work.
Several works drift between a moving and static condition, as in an attempt to alter the perception of passing time. Cassette tape loops moves in and out of each other, a recorded monologue that by means of a set frequency and a snare drum creates an unexpected rhythm, or an installation in which seemingly still objects are in fact constantly performing small movements that balance against each other. Other works turn sensory observations into works that play with our sense of closeness and distance, like a video loop shot from a hot air balloon in which we drift in and out from a manually set focus, revealing the present to be perpetually in flux.
The borderland between the physically present and the ‘ghostly’ abstract is at the core of my practice, and the works are usually characterised by an undertone of melancholy and isolation; they can be described as trembling (and unsuccessful) attempts at communication. Recently, my work centres on psychological unwell-being, describing a sense of desperation and groundlessness, of trying to exist in a perpetuation of limbo.” – Anna Sagström