Artist talk Saturday, January 14 at 2:00 PM
Welcome to a conversation between Håkan Nilsson, art writer and professor of art history, and Inger Bergström in her exhibition Space Floating Through My Eyes. 

Free admission, no pre-registration required. 

Location: Gallery West and Studio, Academy of Fine Arts, 2nd floor.

I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same.

ur Changes, David Bowie

In the exhibition Space Floating Through My Eyes we are met with large abstract textile collages where the The patterned surface forms a kind of space and workspace.

It is possible to see a infinite potential in a pattern, it can spread out in all directions. Everything is here available on the surface but also elusive precisely because the parts constantly sliding together into a whole. In the textile collages, the emphasis is on recognizable pattern images while they seem to be blurred, darkened by shades or stretched out in perspective towards a point far away. 

This associative playing with the fabric's pattern meets elements of abstract shapes that seem to float above the surface in different directions, like something seemingly spatial. Changing planes arise where different laws seem to apply. A surreal atmosphere is sensed, the foreign and the familiar meet. Perhaps with a desire to touch something, a memory or an experience.

Inger Bergström repeatedly uses the ability of fabric to carry references and associations – while also considering the textile surface purely formally, the fabric's
actual properties, color and structure. This double gaze has led to installations and sculptural objects in which fabric has become a kind of building material. Her latest works take on a more two-dimensional character, but even in these the interest in the spatial and sculptural remains.

Biography:

Inger Bergström (b.1959) has an MFA from
Konstfack in Stockholm and an MA from Södertörn University College. In 2017 she completed a major artistic creation for the New Karolinska Hospital. She curated the exhibition “Stories About” at the Textile Museum in Borås in 2019. During the years 2005-2012 Inger Bergström was a professor at Konstfack, before that she worked as a professor for four years at the University of Design and Crafts in Gothenburg. She is represented by Berg Gallery in Stockholm. In 2013 she received a ten-year working grant from the Swedish Artists' Council.