We are pleased to announce the exhibition Övergångsriter by Idun Baltzersen. She is the receipient of the Bernadotte Grant 2016 from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. The grant is a combined one-year studio and works grand for continuing artistic development and specialisation.

I work figuratively, usually with techniques like woodcut, drypoint, linocut or drawing. The motifs are carved in large factory sized plywood boards i.e. woodblocks. When a woodblock is finished, I print it on sheeting, on the floor in my studio. After that I sew the prints together into collages, prints from the same woodblock recur, sometimes several times. I often combine the collages with the actual woodblocks when I exhibit, so that both the original relief and the representations are presented.

The size is important, I like to work monumentally – as large as possible. It is frustrating to make large woodcuts, I get a sore back and splinters in my fingers, I can’t see what I’m doing when the subject is so large, it becomes like a landscape of wood. But when the works are finished, I am always surprised. It is a great satisfaction witnessing how the works develop in dialogue with the technique.

I am captivated by young women, heroines, martyrs, how they live, lived and will live. In my work they are recognizable by their hooded jackets, Converse shoes and self-contained body language. They are their own protagonists, all lead characters in their own estranged bodies, and antagonists to each other, alone together. They occupy the scenes without thinking so much about ’how’ and ’why’, as if it has become the most natural thing in the world, their destiny and mission, doomed to endure the audience and themselves (turning their backs on everyone). They often have their hair braided.

– Idun Baltzersen, Stockholm, 2017

More information:
www.konstakademien.se
www.omkonst.se