Artist’s Reception: October 1st 6-9 pm
Arts for Art Sake event
In her studio in the southwest of Sweden, Eva Hild creates challenging, immaculately beautiful sculptures that synthesize organicism and ethereality. With their sinuous curves and smooth surfaces, the works have an architectonic complexity reminiscent of Frank Gehry’s undulating designs: folding and unfolding within and upon themselves in a sensual dialogue with space. Each work is monochromatic, either pristine white or rich, chocolate black, and is the culmination of a four- to six-month-long process. After first shaping stoneware clay into coils, Hild fastidiously sands and sprays the forms with a kaolin coating to impart a preternaturally matte finish. Finally, she fires them at 1,250 degrees Fahrenheit, ending their genesis and beginning their journeys as objets d’art.
The sculptures that result from this intensive process have won Hild rapturous reviews in publications such as The New York Times (“Astonishing sculptures—a new star in the ceramics firmament.”) and Ceramics Art and Perception (“Somehow she manages to make clay, such a sticky and physical material, seem immaterial.”). Her work has been acquired into some of the world’s most prominent private and corporate collections, as well as museums such as the Museum of Arts and Design (New York), Museum of Modern Ceramic Art (Gifu, Japan), Museum of Contemporary Ceramics (Shanghai, China), and National Museum of Fine Arts (Stockholm, Sweden). She has also been commissioned to create large-scale aluminum, steel, and bronze sculptures in Europe and Asia.
Across diverse media, the artworks remain linked to Hild’s personal experience of the world. “Overall,” she observes, “the work is about lightness, power, strength, fragility, self-sufficiency, and porosity. It is a reflection of my inner landscapes of form. Every day, I experience the tension between presence and absence. My sculptures show me the necessity of opposites; they are paradoxes.”
Hild, who earned her master’s degree from the University of Gothenburg, has an intuitive gift for distilling the thoughts, dreams, and hopes we all share into forms that fascinate both the eye and the intellect. This, above all, is the source of her work’s refinement, grace, and power.
Gallery Bienvenu hours are Tuesday-Saturday, 10 am-5 pm. For more information, please contact gallery director Borislava Callan or owner Cathy Bienvenu at 504.525.0518, or visit our website at www.gallerybienvenu.com.