FRIDA FJELLMAN
"GLINT", Röhsska Museum 1 March - 7 May 2006
Fantasy. Mystique. These words summarise Frida Fjellman´s artistry and describe its feeling. Her art embraces playfulness and seriousness, movement and stillness, light and darkness. She likes working with opposites. From them she creates tension and rhythm while rendering visible the various dimensions of the objects. The pieces are recognisable and easy to like. Their bumptious swellings, lithe curves and surrealistic flows suggest ancestral forms. Frida Fjellman mixes styles freely, creating exciting new constellations where they intersect.
Frida Fjellman (born 1971) graduated from the glass and ceramics programme at Konstfack, Stockholm´s University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, in 1998. By then she had already developed a style of her own, favouring the silly and the not-quite-fine. Her art is distinctive, her sculptural installations of glass, ceramics, wood and neon embodying a very personal style in which the unexpected is an important element. In her compositions, she builds on the purely visual, erecting little stages based on the character of the room, islands of landscape in which her shapes and personalities can interact. The animals of the Swedish forest have a prominent place, and we meet them in a variety of formations and materials. Here are the hare, the fox, the ermine, the lemming, the beaver, the owl, the vole. They often serve as storytellers and, rendered at almost natural scale with highly naturalistic features, they assume a central role in her scenographic landscapes. With simplicity and directness, they communicate with the audience, and through them Frida addresses questions and ideas about what is beautiful and ugly, what is acceptable and not. Of the role of animals in her art, Frida Fjellman says:
The animals can be powerful symbols or decorative elements depending on how, where and with what you place them. People are often much affected by and express strong opinions on my animals. It seems to be easy to apply your feelings to animals.
There has been a notable revival of attention to crafts in recent years. This may seem rather surprising, given that we live in an era where everything is more and more standardised and genuine craft must often give way to faster, cheaper industrial goods. But maybe it is an expression of our fear of losing our history, of allowing something to disappear forever. Our approach to crafts has changed, too. The concept has grown from being chiefly synonymous with function and aesthetics to encompass additional dimensions today. The material is no longer the obvious point of departure for a craftsperson; it is, rather, a tool to be used in the artistic process.
This renaissance of crafts has occurred primarily because independent artists, in pursuing their art, have sought to expand the concept and breathe new life and legitimacy into crafts. Emphasising the artistic element of crafts, they have succeeded in creating change and renewal, at the same time blurring the boundaries between art and craft. Frida Fjellman can be considered to belong to the group of artists that has chosen to focus more on working from an idea, a message or a concept, rather than simply emphasising design or technique. Her pieces serve no requirements of function or purpose, and she finds herself in the borderlands between craft and art. Indeed, her 2004 solo show at Galleri IngerMolin in Stockholm was called ÒBorderlineÓ. Asked whether she considers herself a craftsperson, a designer, a sculptor or simply an artist, she replies:
Such issues used to be very important and troubling for me. But the more I´ve worked and found my own niche, the less I care about them. It used to be problem, worrying about what was what, and it made me focus on all the wrong things. It just took up a lot of energy.
The follow-up question is obvious: is there actually any need to define the meaning of the concept of crafts?
I think it may sometimes be important to make distinctions; above all, it´s good to know what you´re on about yourself. Since my work consists of sculpture, crafts and design, I think I make just such distinctions. Why should I have to stuff everything into the same category when that´s not actually the way it is? Sometimes it´s a problem, especially in Sweden, where we like to place everything in a category, and sometimes unfortunately it can make people nervous and uninterested if you don´t fit into any obvious category. But I try to see it as an asset rather than a problem.
Summarising, she adds that she considers that she works with crafts-based sculpture.
Frida Fjellman´s work leaves nothing to chance - everything is carefully calculated and preceded by long processes of preparation. Despite the relatively short time she has been working, she has found her place professionally and through that and her powerful artistic idiom has succeeded in becoming one of the standard-bearers in the marketing and development of contemporary Swedish crafts.
Christina Wiklund
Curator, Röhsska Museum of Design and Applied Art
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