Dense matter

Dense matter
2006
Light table, selection of balls

I was growing up influenced by my parents that had a strong interest in higher mathematics, physics, nature and art. During my childhood my inner world was always filled with terms originating these fields. The ball in its various forms and shapes forms for me a kind of nucleus around which visual memories revolves. The shape of a ball or sphere somewhat attracts associations to biological topics and narratives of the microcosm and its molecular world.
In one of my early childhood memories I remember myself lying in an IKEA ball sea and ruminating about abstracts ideas of molecules, dense matter and black holes. The title “Dense matter”, originates from physics, matter is anything that has both mass and volume (takes up space). Somehow it playfully popped in my head and stuck. During the last several years I have tried to collect as many unique ball specimens as possible, and have assembled over 1300 individual items. Why balls have been made?We like the smooth surface and the eye pleasing shape- coupled with an irresistible impulse of kicking it into the landscape or smashing it against the wall.
With a recorded history of at least 5000 years the ball is the earliest toy known to men. Along active games the most highly developed global played ones are played with balls and there is a great amount of them. The selected items on this table are inviting you to brainstorm and find a narrative element

Greenaway dish

Greenaway dish
2003
Bouquet of color selected balls in glass bowls

The works name refers to the British film director Peter Greenaway.
The objects are displayed in an almost clinical style namely as specimen’s that grow in Petri dishes, nevertheless the balls colonies seem to overflow in their fruity and fresh appearance. The arrangement made me think of the beautiful food and flower displays as being seen in Peter Greenaway’s movie, The Cook The Thief His Wife & Her Lover.
The visual hallmark of Greenaway's cinema is the heavy influence of Renaissance painting, and Flemish painting in particular, notably in scenic composition and illumination and the concomitant contrasts of costume and nudity, nature and architecture, furniture and people, sexual pleasure and painful death.

No inborn ideas

From the work series origin of ideas

“ No inborn idea”
1998
Oaks, wax, lead, 40x30cm (closed)

In philosophy and psychology, an innate idea is a concept or item of knowledge, which is said to be universal to all humanity—that is, something people are born with rather than something people have learned through experience. The issue is controversial, and can be said to be an aspect of a long-running nature versus nurture debate, albeit one localized to the question of understanding human cognition. The statement “Non innate ideas”. was formulated by William of Ockham. He argued that the mind is in fact devoid of all knowledge or ideas at birth; it is a blank sheet or tabula rasa. He argued that all our ideas are constructed in the mind via a process of constant composition and decomposition of the input that we receive through our senses.
Again I used the material wax as inprint able metaphor on the one side, and a lead cast positive on the other. The book itself is display and printing press at the same time.
The protagonist William of Baskerville in the Book “Name of the rose”, by Umberto Eco is said to be based on the upper mentioned.