Sweden, 1990
Held (and Holds) for Thousands of Years
A contemporary body is cloaked in a slipstream of silhouettes, referential and recycled. Ingrid Blix’s new sculptures are variations in black outerwear twined around thin-toed steel frames, free of narrative but bulging with manipulations and conniptions of form. Assembled with a deftness of composition and contradictory in their illusion of lightness, they flirt with misrepresentation of identity and question necessary prostheses with individuating flourishes.
Notionally addressing the terse dualities of public and private, inside and outside by representing both as a surface in the disembodied garments, the artist’s hand is added as a modulating and technical compass point of labour practices. Manufactured and dressed, the original form is brought into question. Blix works with the phenomenon of a simulacra, in which the dissimilarities and difference form a space of perception between the supposed object and its fabulation. The historically tailoring stitch is charged with identifying or disguising a body and its subjectivity. Associating this with the construction of and adjustments to images which circulate, Blix articulates challenging proportions which elude an easy after-image, the viewer’s eye constantly diverted to details.
- Ivan Cheng
