The road to Moscow - textile translations by Anne Mette Larsen

The award-winning Danish weaver Anne Mette Larsen is now ready to show the third and final part of the sequence “Auf der anderen Seite”, which she presented the first two parts of in 2007 and 2012 respectively. And so now the third part.

Her work represents at the same time a truly unique global view, rare in Danish craftsmanship, and the introverted process of creating completely from the bottom - even when this involves a bike ride of thousands of kilometers!

Inspiration from the colorful ornamental town houses and from the architecture of concrete buildings and silent colors - as Anne Mette Larsen saw during the cycling tours, first in Poland and Ukraine and now from Russia - forms a starting point. As part of her work, she has scaled down this inspiration to basic modules of checked pattern. These basic modules form the basis for both the new patterns and the color universe seen in the various weaving projects from her hand.

The newest piece of work is a 10 meter long frieze entitled “Road to Moscow”. It is woven at the Danish Workshops in Copenhagen at the weaving workshop's TC-1 loom, a single wire-guided loom that gives great freedom in the pattern formation. The friezes “Datja” and “Corpus” (Russian for 'allotment garden' and 'housing block') are woven the same place on a so-called ARM loom.

There are many phases in the work process, including the construction of a pattern library and a comprehensive dyeing of silk and paper yarns. For each work, this process involves up to 50 color baths - a partial anarchistic process that corresponds to the systematic legality of the weaving.

At the exhibition the results can be seen, and as Anne Mette Larsen explains the dogmas she sets up for her work: "I like to cook it down to something very simple, where I set some limits for myself, but still with a rich opportunity to blow up the frames, and even though there is a lot of control, there is room for surprises along the way."

In addition, Anne Mette Larsen in a new media for her has created a series of color cuts. These are made up of up to 5 layers based on the same pattern design that is continuous in some of the weaves. She says: "The process with printing press is comparable to the weaving process. It is a physical and systematic process in which multiple layers mix, without predicting exactly what is happening. I mix the colors by “gefühl” and let me be surprised. In addition, the woodcut allows the results of the color blends to appear a little faster than in the weaving."

The exhibition includes 6 weaving projects, a series of color cuts, an installation and a new smaller art book about “The Road to Moscow”.

The exhibition will be displayed in the central pillar hall at the Art Center Silkeborg Bad in the period 4 May - 15 September 2019.

Anne Mette Larsen (born 1961) is educated at the Aarhus Art Academy, Weaving and Painting in 1999. She is resident in Silkeborg and has exhibited at home and abroad, among other places in Poland and Ukraine. In Denmark she has exhibited at Charlottenborg, the Art Center Silkeborg Bad and Design Museum Denmark.

In 2011 she won the Biennial Prize, the Biennale for Crafts and Design. She has been responsible for several decorations in Denmark and received numerous awards and legends. Anne Mette Larsen is a member of the artist group Textile Illusions. Website: www.annemettelarsen.dk

The pictures are taken by photographer Ole Akhøj.