Annealing

About this event

S Ø R E N

Annealing

Artist Statement:

Annealing began with the idea that pressure does not always destroy a material. Sometimes it changes its structure.

At the center of the installation is a woman caught in the act of falling. Her body moves backward and downward, but she is still trying to hold on. I am interested in that particular moment, the space between losing your footing and surrendering to the fall.

Behind her, a large distressed cloth scroll carries another kind of record. It is drawn, stained, torn, marked, and worked over. Figures emerge and disappear across its surface as though the cloth has been recording what happened to it.

The body and the scroll hold the same history differently. One carries it physically. The other records its trace.

Copper appears only in fragments. For me, it is not decoration. It is evidence of heat and change.

Annealing is not really about returning to what existed before. It is about what remains after pressure has changed the material, and what that altered thing is capable of becoming.