For the last nine years I have had my studio within the Ifö factory area in Bromölla. There, three independent factories work with sanitary, ceramic and industrial porcelain in different ways.

Here I have the opportunity to pick and choose among ready-made bits and surface structures, and bring them to light in specific works. Being visually exposed to various industrial processes triggers me. Working behind the scenes, studying forms that are invisible supports for a finished product, following industrial production adds a poetic element to my latest work, Small darknesses, in which I use a white cube intended to support different kinds of sinks during the firing process.

I transform the cube with a transparent glaze, adding a blackened bit of clay, which could be an element of a new work, built by me.

The same thing happens in the Tear Diptych; even here I have combined two processes. The form is a laboratory product designed to inspect organic material in industrial sanitation production. On the ceramic cube lies a handful of naked, skin-colored clay with clear human prints–caught while working– perhaps an invisible support for a new object as well? Everything is dated, measured and evaluated–which intrigues me!

Invitation to the animal

In 2008 I began the salt-lick project, in which cows mold salt-licks with their tongues, after which exact copies are molded and manufactured in porcelain.
In 2010, ecologically-raised cows at Wanås helped me to produce two new salt-lick forms.
In 2011, I worked with Swedish lowland cattle (SLB).
During 2012 I let Rödkullor (a cow indigenous to Sweden) in Sinarpsdalen outside of Båstad, produce new forms in this series, which are named after them.

In the series Humanoid, a creature cringes for protection. This is an instinctive behavior that is common to animals and humans alike. Selecting the material is important – the clay invites a physical process in which I work intuitively and slowly, hacking away at the surface with a knife. The sculpture becomes a place – a state – a self-portrait, which through the work-process is visualized as a game in which animals, humans, and trees are finally included in the same formation.

Existence is a sculpture in a series based on the organic visual similarities between the human form and nature. A piece molded from nature in its original form – a large sweet potato, gets a different meaning when cast in porcelain.

Stratum is the geological term that describes different layers of rock or soil in nature. The material used for this piece is compressed rag paper from the industrial fruit industry.

In my work I often combine my own process with something that is beyond my control – a tension arises from this that gives the works their own life. Long exposure to an industrial environment is obviously crucial for this approach.

Sometimes I see my work as a kind of artistic recycling, placed in a reality in which expression is filtered through organic chaos. Images glimpsed in the corner of an eye. Plant matter. Bodies. All is entwined and processed.

Åsa Lindsjö 2015