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Elsa Tomkowiak1981, Frankrike
Elsa Tomkowiak (1981, FR) has been in search of the most radical painting tools starting with her art studies at ENSA in Dijon. Reflecting her predilection for an open gesture and day-glow colors of personal gradient, her earliest color interventions were in the snow and on vinyl surfaces suspended above industrial waste. Wielding broom-like brushes, she adopted a method of applying layers of multicolored paint to translucent or solid bands of plastic sheeting or to massive spheres that can be positioned to redirect light and restructure the space. Transgressing the cannons of working with paint, Tomkowiak opens it up to the spirit of liberty and munificence. Among his last commissions and residences, there is a swimming pool (Mönchengladbach, D), an opera house (Nantes, F), an abbey (Angers, F), two bridges (Saint Gervais F, Quebec), the greenhouse of a spa (Pougues the waters F), a castle (Tournon-sur-Rhône F) as well as landscaping during major urban events (Offenbach am Main D, Varengeville-sur-mer, Verdun) , she also creates permanent works in an Hospital (Angers) and an hotel (Nantes). All the environments she invades are the support of a prolific pictorial work that raises the question of our relationship with reality.
Veronica Greiger
1987 Danmark
The sculpture Blue Marble consists of thirteen marble boulders arranged tightly together in a square, placed in Örebro Castle’s park.
The artworks title refers to the material itself: Blue Ekebergs marble – yet the title also refers to an image of the earth, taken from one of Apollo 17’s crew members in 1972. It was the first photograph of our planet that’s been shot from a distance and got named “blue marble” due to the pattern of clouds and deep blue, which from afar looked like marble.
Rocks – just like images – manage to capsule place and time, although, each of them in their own way: It takes a fragment of a second to take a photograph while certain kinds of rocks evolve over billions of years. The fundament of this very region around Örebro contains amongst other rock species marble, which is up to 2 billion years old. From a geological perspective these rocks are evidence of the earth’s history: What now is marble started as a lime stone at the bottom of the sea, then, under huge pressure and heat the chalk stone recrystallized.
If you take a close look of Blue Marble, you will find that none of the boulders look the same. While the formal language of the rocks shows human traces of mining, they also embody a natural language revealing traces of the Swedish landscape, chemical composition and decomposition. Some of them even have traces of ice that carved its way into the marble and left a natural marble relief. In this way each boulder becomes like an individual portrait, an identity with a history.
Blue Marble aims to bring not only time but also the gravity of the earth to our consciousness. Both time and gravity are phenomena that we all relate to – it’s what defines us on earth. By sensing the density of the marble boulders in the middle of Örebro, Blue Marble allows time and gravity to be present and palpable for the viewer.
Through a lack of gravity the crewmembers of Apollo 17 sensed the earths attraction in a whole other way. This new perspective later on made the iconic photograph become a symbol for environmental consciousness. Today we experience a need of developing a new environmental consciousness and to get in touch with our relation to nature and the history of the earth.
Blue Marble offers a bunch of rocks from the local area on which we can slow down our pace to take a break in the shade and connect directly with a piece of raw nature. It’s also a place of reflection about our planets silent building blocks in a giant puzzle.
Veronika Geiger explores the intersection of art and geology; the key in her works is always a relation to a certain place. Her works are often a response to various experiences of being in waste landscapes. Within the extended time frame of geology our perspectives can change, such as holding a rock in our hands suddenly allows one to engage with complex forces as gravity and different layers of time of our planet. The human influence on the globes ecosystem becomes an unavoidable link in Geiger’s works, thus geology shows unambiguous signs of our footprints.