Captured

Glazed porcelain and stoneware

145 x 44 x 44 cm
Unique

Irene Nordli (born 1967, Oslo) lives and works in Oslo and Heestrand, Sweden. She graduated from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design in 1995 and was a professor at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Department of Art and Craft, until 2019.

For over 20 years, clay has been Nordli's primary material. She gained recognition as an artist in the 90s for her porcelain figures, composed of parts from classical porcelain casting molds of decorative figures, assembled into fascinating hybrids. Nordli has continued to evolve this artistic language. Her sculptures are dreamlike, beautiful, and grotesque, featuring a contrast between form and surface. The organic and inorganic elements blend together, with a subtle distinction between the two. Nordli follows and renews the history of the material, creating her own fragmented narratives. Her works often consist of both abstract and recognizable parts, assembled through modeling, casting, and reshaping into an organic sculptural form.

Nordli has previously explored the imaginary space, reflecting history, destruction, and suffering from the outside world. Abstraction and dissolution of familiar forms can reflect a primitive fear of the unknown. The choice of material is crucial for the expression and experience of the sculpture. The symbiotic relationship between the organic, amorphous, and figurative investigates the tension between good and evil, grotesque and beautiful.

Nordli's works have been acquired by numerous collections and museums, including the National Museum, Arts Council Norway, Sørlandet Art Museum, Porsgrunn City Museum, the Fund for the Purchase of Contemporary Arts and Crafts, Østfold County Municipality, Drammen Museum, and Hamburg Museum für Kunst (Germany). She has also participated in several Public Art projects, such as "Don’t be a Stranger" at Asker Cultural Center and "Månelyst" at Halden Prison (KORO). In 2017, she received the Crafts Prize from the Visual Artists Association (BBK).