Sten Are Sandbeck
Installation view Amos Rex Museum, Helsinki
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While we are waiting (tree rings), 2021
wood, plastic, epoxy, acrylic
dimensions variable
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“The material is birch. Probably from an old, large tree in our garden.
A few years ago, we refurbished a 1930’s house to live in. In the garden there
is a small shed. It contained the original outdoor toilet for the house, a room
for winter/summer storage and also a space for
chopping firewood and practicing minor woodwork. The elderly woman we bought
the house from had lived with her husband that seemed to have liked working
with wood. After having lived here for 6 years, I decided to use that material.
As a kind of payback and homage to the earlier owner. Bringing it alive again.
The idea of the eyes looking out is a combination of several thoughts.
One, the idea of the “gaze” from outside that constitutes our self-image. Our
ego or self are fictions and narratives that largely have been put into us from
outside; from parents, school, language; culture at large. Also, there was this
idea that I have been working on for some time, that the art object is invented
by the spectator through his or her projections. And that this also works the
other way around: The spectator is invented and sculpted by the art object.
It’s a kind of who is looking at who, cross projections. Then there is the idea
connecting this more with animism/pantheism and (super)natural beings connected
to folktales and -beliefs. That there is soul and consciousness in all things
and phenomenon.
I have called the work “While we are waiting (tree rings)” as a kind of
metaphor to our lives and bodies evolving - a mix of experience and expectations.
Some seem to be awaiting something, anticipating, anxiously looking up for
something good or bad. Others seem to not want to be disturbed, more introvert.
Yet others seem more open to a meeting, a personal encounter, a contact.
All in all, I think the work mirror our insecurities, our vulnerability
– but also a wish and an openness for genuine contact and fellowship. Also,
there are these issues of growing, of growing up, of aging. Tree rings like
years passing and skin aging, everything happening to us marking us. Someone
might see children looking expectantly upwards, some will see a family, some a
lonely person, some an elderly crying out his or her existential pain. In the
end it's about humanism, existentialism; being present, as a subject but also
as an object.”
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