Solo Show KRAFT Bergen

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Interval is the space or distance between two units. It can refer to proximity or distance in time and space – between actions, frequency, and objects. Without intervals, we would not be able to distinguish between material, form, and color. Even though we may not always take good notice of it, this space in between is crucial for understanding where something begins and where it ends. This includes ourselves, in our encounter with the world.

In Intervall (Interval) by Liilian Saksi, one finds distance in various forms – between the rhythm of everyday life as a working artist and the small events of private life that determine when and how one can work. Between material and production, idea and execution. Distance between the wool she uses, from when it clings to the bodies of her sheep, to the threads she spins from it, to the colors she bathes them in, and finally, the ultimate composition in the exhibition space. For Saksi, distance, and thus the closeness to the material, is crucial. The wool she uses is part of the individuals in flocks of sheep she shares strong, personal bonds with – whether they are her own or her parents’. Their unique personalities, as well as the differences in the qualities of their wool, result from lives closely intertwined on a deep, personal level. Therefore, Saksi has a close understanding of the elasticity and color of the wool in her work, as she knows the sheep that bear it. In Intervall she has made a selection based on these properties, which she has further processed into thread on the spinning wheel, and finally created skeins – an entwining of spun threads that wind around themselves into long stripes. These stripes are sorted according to color scales, where she keeps the gray ones uncolored but dyes the white ones with synthetic color. The colors she uses are green, red, and blue – a nod to the world of minerals, where one finds it in oxidized copper, rust, iron, and cobalt. In ROOM 2, the skeins are installed in new intervals, where the distances they hang in determine how one sees them and what patterns are formed. The repetitions of the coiled threads and the intervals they are hung in thus open up a space to find resonance between the distant and the close, and the inherent contrasts between them. A space where the story of art, material, relationships, and work is coiled around each other, playing together in a larger whole.

Liilian Saksi (b. 1989, Sweden) holds a master’s degree from 2017 in Medium- and Materialbased Arts from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. She has exhibited, among other places, at Soft Gallery in Oslo, Kongsvinger Art Association, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. In 2021, she was one of the exhibitors at DNB Sparebankstiftelsen’s exhibition at Oslo Kunstforening. Her works have been acquired by Innlander County Council and the National Museum in Oslo,