Hilda Hellström | Vanitas

The title Vanitas refers to still lifes of decaying flowers and fruits, an art form that was particularly popular in the 17th century. The motifs were intended to make the viewer reflect on time, transience, nature, beauty, and death.

 

Nature itself embodies a paradox: it is both eternal and transient and can therefore serve as a place for contemplation on the passage of time, on that which is transient yet timeless.

 

Hellström works in general with both time and nature as themes. Her primary method – the casting process – is a time-based process where the material is transformed from liquid to solid. For Hellström, the casting process serves as a metaphor for geological time, as it recalls how rocks are formed.

 

For this exhibition, Hellström has worked with two different casting techniques; relief and intarsia. The intarsias are cast in several stages, where pre-cast shapes are placed in the mold. To emphasize the geological references, she calls these organic forms ”aggregates”. In her work, Hellström methodically balances chance and calculation, allowing the weight, viscosity, and unpredictability of the material to take center stage. She thinks of the process as a kind of geological act of creation. Invisible movements are translated into physical, permanent works. Once the slabs are cast, they are split in half by a stonemason, and it is only at this point that the compositions of the works reveal themselves.

The motifs befind the reliefs are casts of plants picked in late October, just before the arrival of cold weather and nature’s decay. The works are titled Höst I and Höst II. As a resident of Copenhagen, Hellström has played with the meaning of the word höst (Swedish for autumn). In Danish, høst means harvest, while autumn is called efterår.

 

Hilda Hellström (b. 1984) lives and works in Copenhagen and holds an MFA from Royal College of Art in London. Her work has been shown in exhibitions in Europe, North America, and Asia, and is included in several collections such as Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Copenhagen City Council, Malmö Konstmuseum, Röhsska Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, and MAK, Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna. Previous solo and group exhibition venues include Galerie 35m2, Prag (2023); CHART Art Fair, Copenhagen (2023); Elverket, Ekenäs (2022); Göteborgs Konstmuseum (2021); Berg Gallery, Stockholm (2020); Institut Suédois, Paris (2019); and Etage Projects, Copenhagen (2019). Hellström has also made a number of public works, including The way an algae transforms into a rock at Stockholm University Library.