Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Swedish Artist Susanna Hesselberg Builds a Plummeting Underground Library

Swedish artist Susanna Hesselberg's latest work plummets deep into the ground Alice-in-Wonderland-style. “When My Father Died It Was Like a Whole Library Had Burned Down” (named after Laurie Anderson’s song "World Without End") is a mind bending reproduction of a library inherited by the artist from her father, created for Denmark's Sculpture by the Sea exhibition series. The biennial festival, which closed on July 5th, boasted 56 site specific installations along the Danish coast. Hesselberg's mysterious contribution is vertical tunnel framed by a piece of glass that allows viewers to peer into a dark tower books only visible by their spines. Hesselberg wanted to recreate the depth of loss or losing control, as one might experience when a loved one dies.

Swedish artist Susanna Hesselberg’s latest work plummets deep into the ground Alice-in-Wonderland-style. “When My Father Died It Was Like a Whole Library Had Burned Down” (named after Laurie Anderson’s song “World Without End”) is a mind bending reproduction of a library inherited by the artist from her father, created for Denmark’s Sculpture by the Sea exhibition series. The biennial festival, which closed on July 5th, boasted 56 site specific installations along the Danish coast. Hesselberg’s mysterious contribution is vertical tunnel framed by a piece of glass that allows viewers to peer into a dark tower books only visible by their spines. Hesselberg wanted to recreate the depth of loss or losing control, as one might experience when a loved one dies. Their obscurity is a signature of the artist’s work, who primarily practices photography where her subjects are obscured in playful, yet odd images. Interestingly, many of her photographs portray people peering into objects such as mirrors, another Alice reference. A highly conceptual thinker, Hesselberg’s main objective is to create alluring imagery on the surface, where, she has said, “there shouldn’t be anything in the way when you are looking at it.”

Additional works:

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Chinese artist and beekeeper Ren Ri collaborates with the stinging, black-and-yellow insects to create sculptures catalyzed by natural processes. The artist builds geometric, plastic forms and plants the queen bee in the center before introducing the rest of the hive. The bees naturally build their habitat around the wooden sticks inside of structure, creating organic, irregular shapes that contrast with the pristine plastic prisms that encase them.
Los Angeles artist Roberto Benavidez has reimagined characters from Hieronymus Bosch’s work in an likely sculptural form: piñatas. These life-sized versions of figures from Bosch works like “The Garden of Earthly Delights” bring 15-century sensibilities into three-dimensional existence. The work blends both traditional Mexican and European influences.
Erik Johansson disrupts the quiet stillness of life in the countryside with images of idyllic scenes gone awry. His photography borders on photo illustration, as Johansson takes great liberties with his imaginative editing. In one piece called Land Fall, for instance, a field drops off into an abyss like a waterfall, leaving a small cottage on its precipice. In other works, Johansson muddles the distinction between indoors and outdoors, creating optical illusions that play with our understanding of space. In addition to working on his personal projects, Johansson is a commercial photographer and the highly-polished look of his commissioned work comes through in his fine art.
First featured in HF Vol 34, artist Click Mort takes vintage ceramic figurines and "recapitates" them into whimsical characters spawned from his imagination. In his latest series on view at La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles, the artist takes influences from his own dreams and nightmares. His exhibition "Delirium Tremens" is named after a psychotic condition typical of withdrawal in chronic alcoholics, which often involves hallucinations. Considering this, while his works are infused with nostalgia and humor, one cannot ignore a certain melancholy in them.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List