ed.itions: gyllenhammar
In October, ed. art launches its latest print edition: the etching Natt (Night) by Charlotte Gyllenhammar. Gyllenhammar is one of Sweden's most celebrated artists with a wide range of exhibitions and public works behind her. For ed. art, she has developed a simple, yet very dramatic image. "The burning figure is an eternal image of suffering, but metaphorically also that of rapture" she says about the motif.
Natt is linked to the series of photos and a video from 2014 called Night. Night depicts a figure on fire, walking back and forth, and in that movement reflecting itself. In the etching, the movement has taken physical form in a mirrored duplication of the burning figure. The charged subject is linked to many of Charlotte Gyllenhammar's earlier works.
- I have often portrayed a state of being just before or after a dramatic event such as an explosion or a fall. Here, instead, we are in the midst of the event.
- The work has something of both dream and nightmare about it, I have wanted to depict both the inner and the outer image. Metaphorically, fire can represent the spirit and a burning passion. Physically, the burning figure is perhaps the worst condition a human being can be in.
To capture precisely that ambiguity has been important in the work.
- In the video, the figure moves around and around, so that it is not clear to the spectator if she is trying to escape the fire or if she herself has started burning – does the fire come from the inside or the outside?
Meanwhile, Charlotte Gyllenhammar is of course aware that this is a heavy image which evokes human ordeals of all times, from Joan of Arc to pogroms and more recent events.
- It depicts one of the human conditions: the double movement of seeing, but not being able to bear what one sees.
Freshly printed copies of Natt, taped to boards as to not coil when the moistened paper dries, in the studio of printmaker Alexandra Kern.
Technique: photopolymer etching, three plates
Edition: 50
Size of paper: 60x50 cm
Size prints: 40x30 cm
Paper: Hahnemühle 350g