Underskog

Runa Sandnes uses mirrors. These free standing mirrors are not only reflecting or picturing something, they are what is being pictured.

Her use of geometric motives and contrasting transparent and reflective materials makes minimalism an unavoidable reference. But what is actually minimalism? When meeting the iconic work of Donald Judd (Untitled, 1965, Galvanized iron…. Seven parts, each 23 × 101.6 × 76.2 cm. Moderna Museet, Stockholm) recently this came up as a crucial question. His shelf was so heavy, and not as cold and strict and light as I always imagined. If the idea of minimalism is to reduce a work of art to the minimum number of colors, values, shapes, lines and textures, then is this really what Sandnes is doing? I think she is rather attempting to represent or symbolize something.

If you look closely at her works, where the sleek lines and edges make continuums that are clean, shiny and transparent, it might start to move. As the pipes of a church organ, with sound according to size and shape, the light is moving from mirror to mirror in Sandnes´ installations. She scratches lines into the paint on the back of the mirrors, so that parts of the mirrors become transparent. And the lines bend in soft and stricter angles, in an organic way that leaves minimalism behind. Because the angles are not just repetitive, they change a little for every slightly unparallell line. It is as if these sculptures are creating another dimension.

The mirrors and their bending, edging and twisting lines represent something two-dimensional. The installation itself ultimately transforms into three-dimensionality through the way Sandnes works with space. She is addressing every angle of the room, and twisting it until it starts to move on from one mirror to the other.

I rarely speak of sacral space any longer, but here it is impossible to avoid it. Still, I do not want to address this matter lightly, not open up for popular alternative religious ideas, but simply state that the works of Sandnes establishes sacral space. As the gothic cathedrals stretched towards the sky on tinier and tinier pillars, lighter and lighter as the glass became more and more dominant until all of it was only light through glass, so does Sandnes. Her plates of glass are not tempered, but scaringly fragile and sharp. I don´t think it is “spiritual”, but it is certainly sacral.