Ida Wieth

Ida Wieth

This autumn’s guest artist on S12, under our Artist in Residence program profile, is Ida Wieth from Denmark.

Ida achieved her Master of Fine Art in glass art in Edinburgh, Scotland between 2007 and 2009, after having studied at Kosta Glas Center in Sweden between 2002 and 2005.

Throughout 2020 Ida has been profiled with works in the exhibition Earth, Wind, Water, Fire, at Gallery F15 in Moss, Norway, as part of the 44th edition of the exhibition series Trends in Nordic Crafts, and she has participated in the duo exhibition Sculpture, Texture , Figurines at Sophienholm Art Center in Kongens Lyngby, Denmark.

In 2019, Ida had a solo exhibition at the Danish Craftsmen & Designers’ gallery Officinet in Copenhagen. She has, over the years, also shown works in exhibitions at prestigious galleries in London, New York, Venice, Toronto, Tokyo, Basel and Brussels, in addition to being represented in group exhibitions in both Finland and Sweden alongside in her home country Denmark and now in Norway.

In 2018/9, she formed a part of the Harbourfront Center’s Nordic glass festival, Festival of Cool, in Toronto, Canada. In 2018, she also participated in the prestigious Toyama International Glass Exhibition, at the Toyama Glass Art Museum in Toyama, Japan. That same year, she was also represented at the Homo Faber Festival, organized by the Michelangelo Foundation, and the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, in Venice, Italy.

Her domestic exhibitions at both the Glass Museum in Ebeltoft, in 2018, and the Biennial of Crafts and Design in Carlsberg Byen, Copenhagen, 2015 should also be emphasized in this short summary of her curriculum.

Wander / Wonder

Walking and wondering, or contemplating, is the main theme of the project that Ida Wieth is developing during her residency at S12 in September and October. Her objects will eventually be exhibited at gallery Entrée, here in Bergen.  Ida will also offer an artist talk-session at our facilities, here in S12, Saturday the 17th of October at 16.00 hrs.

Meeting Ida’s artwork is like digging up a layer of turf, and subsequently looking at a part of ourselves with all our fibers, roots, ways of being and wild paths tied together in a web of materials that bond, compete, creates beauty, multiply and grows. In other compositions, she creates combinations of iron and glass carrying traces of imprint nature and reality, shaping rooms and corridors.

Ida works with the site-specific, subtracted from both rural and urban environments, by seeking an understanding of the many different qualities that ties a place together, and how these literally imprint into her glass, metal and thematic threads or branches imported from that reality. Through her physical work with the elements, she also intertwines herself, and becomes a part of the fabric

I am reflecting on my own imprints, expressions and impressions, she says, and means it literally. At the same time, she engages in an artistic archeology of what she describes as geological layers of building materials. All of these concepts make sense in the face of Ida’s objects. In one of her previous projects, she also worked with the idea of the specific weight of words. In her art we therefore experience a very focused search for the true meaning of concepts such as pipes, braiding, materials, and the passing of time as we live. Her main material in her artistic work is glass. Parts of her project are precisely about challenging this fragile, transparent and delicate material with its elitist status in meetings where the hard, the brown and the tough makes its marks, and leave residue.

The surface of the glass carries in itself elements and tissues of everything around us. Like us, the glass must bend and partake.