Matter matters
Through a poetic fusion of the natural and synthetic, Norwegian artist and research fellow at the Oslo Academy of Fine Arts, Ane Graff, explores how we define the distinction between the analogue and the digital. Graff’s recent sculptures call attention to the alchemical forces at play in our daily lives, where objects are transformed by deep time geology and the present day touch of the human hand.
Ane Graff became a research fellow at the Oslo Academy of Fine Arts in 2015, where she is currently doing a 3-year project titled “Why Matter Matters: Questions of Materiality in the Physical World”. The project combines knowledge from the sciences, philosophy, and feminist science studies with poetry, reflecting upon matter and materiality.
Materiality and the notion of touch are at the core of Ane Graff’s recent work What Oscillates (2017). Graff examines the material properties of the virtual by drawing our attention to the raw materials that make our technologies possible. When we touch a screen, what is it we are actually touching? What Oscillates examines the materiality of the virtual: the different minerals, metals, and other raw materials used in digital technology. Copper, for example, the ancient chemical element now ubiquitous in communications infrastructure, appears in the shape of salt growths and shimmering crystal formations. As such, Ane Graff focuses on these ongoing oscillations that keep our life pendulum swinging.
Behind every glossy screen, reality is not only a set of basic physical components. Rather, it is a complex, interrelated material reality that Ane Graff constantly challenges and investigates. In her artistic exploration of the nature of matter, she seeks to produce new knowledge about the way we experience the physical world around us. A physical world that keeps developing and changes our modes of action – in art and in life in general.
What Oscillates can be seen in the group show Myths of the Marble at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter between February 3 and April 2, 2017.
CV
Born 1974 in Bodø, Norway.
Graduated from Vestlandet’s Art Academy (Bergen, NOR) in 2004.
Recent exhibitions
- The 11th Gwangju Biennale, The Eight Climate (What Does Art Do?), Gwangju, ROK
- Surround Audience, The New Museum Triennial 2015, NY, USA
- Distant Moods in a Blue Evening, Cesis Art Festival 2015, Riga, LV
- Momentum 2013 – the 7th Nordic Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moss, NOR
- Your Groundwater, 2013, Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Kr. Sand, NOR