Artwork of the month October

Carin Ellberg, Sunrise 1, 1998

Carin Ellberg

* 1959 in Stockholm


Sunrise 1, 1998


Nylons, glue, toys
300 x 300 x 400 cm
LSK 98.45

Carin Ellberg's creative artistic work has emerged from her concrete living conditions, from the fact that Ellberg is a woman, and from the immediate sphere in which she moves as a woman. The series of works which laid the foundation for today's work began in the mid 1990s. Stela consisting of clothing, and floor installations made out of domestic material emerged. The experience of space and objects associated with Arte povera supplements the more traditional genre such as painting, drawing and objects. In the following years Ellberg has developed her convincing oeuvre of installation – on walls and floor –, the greatest part of which are created from nylon tights soaked in bookbinder's glue. She arranges these "humble" , personal and at the same time "typically"  female elements in ornamental patterns – at the beginning, these employed simple mimetics, but soon these patterns developed into larger units without any mimetic dimension, before – in the most recent works – they were again integrated into an iconographic context. The work Sunrise 1 is a good example of this.

A circular ornament is mounted on the wall, floating just above the skirting board. From here, the installation develops across the floor into the room, and finally divides into individual tracks between which a village, a civilizing situation is arranged using children's toys. From this point onwards, the installation reveals itself to be a reference to the long-dominant Scandinavian tradition of an exposition of landscapes. Immediately, however, this is overlaid by the personal optics of the artist's living environment (the toys belong to her two preschool-age sons). And finally the work operates in a sphere of references to art history. For at the same time, the circular sun motif refers to late Gothic architectural décor, for example to the rose windows in the west façades of great cathedrals, but also to traditional, bourgeois cultural practices for women, such as lacemaking.

<b>Carin Ellberg, Sunrise 1, 1998</b>
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein highlights a work from the permanent collection each month throughout the year. Works from the collection of the Hilti Art Foundation are also included in this series on a regular basis.