Sometimes you have to search a while for one of Serina Erfjord’s artworks. I know it should be here, but where is it, really? Then it suddenly appears, initially perhaps through a small gesture, a distraction somewhere in the far corner of your eye. A hole, a rotating protrusion, a runny stain held in place by the balance between mass and centrifugal force. Discovered, as if by chance, because with Serina Erfjord’s works we are often faced with a very low-key artistic expression – except when sound is involved. The mould growing up the wall from a corner of the room is not what you think. It is Erfjord’s site-specific drawing that occupies the space where two walls meet; static, but potentially moving in its expression.
Whereas you shudder at the sight of the skin that forms on boiling milk, Serina Erfjord preserves it, like something precious. She speaks enthusiastically about its amazing material properties: semi-transparent, extremely fragile, but also so incredibly stable once dry. Materials are an important subject for Erfjord, especially those which seem least usable; the small, almost unremarkable and understated objects, ones that are practically unnoticeable. A frost spot on a wall, Cold Stain, reveals nothing about the cleverness of the technical thinking behind it when observed close-up. While it slowly moves and moults, it also moves us, on a mental level.
A window pane trembles almost imperceptibly. The viewer recognizes their own reflection, but everything bulges under their gaze, like a window in the wind. “Lucky coincidences” is what Serina Erfjord calls the things that pop up as ideas. “Imagine a window duvet,” she thinks, and suddenly she is on to something that moves her forward, to do research and more testing. The difficult animates her; it MUST be a little challenging. This is why she cast a window in clear silicone. Where is the fragile balance between solid and liquid, before it bursts? There is always a danger that it will not work; it is unpredictable. Like life itself.
Text: Grethe Hald
Translation: Glen Farley