PRESS RELEASE

In plain, Emma Hummerhielm Carlén (*1991, Stockholm) develops a series of sculptural interventions that intertwine closely with the architecture of the Moltkerei Werkstatt and respond to it with precision. The point of departure is the geometry of the space. Vertical works unfold freely as spatial adapters, functioning like hinges that absorb, shift, and reconfigure structures. The title refers to plainness and the absence of ornament, while also evoking plane, surface, and openness. The works infiltrate the existing architecture without overpowering it. Reduced gestures generate an unexpected intensity, amounting to an analysis of the functions of materiality and representation.
Layers of wax applied to photographs transform into objects that resist unequivocal readability. From photographic fragments emerge hybrid works in which what appears fixed can at any moment be set into motion. Out of this tension arise situations that shift perception and unfold a fragile poetics. Exemplary in this regard is the work Tilted River, which depicts a water surface. The fragment does not appear as landscape but as a tilted plane, where traces of wax together with reflections transform the pictorial space into an almost abstract field. At the same time, the fusion of frame and image generates a relief-like structure that seems to transcend the boundaries of media.
In plain, these considerations are translated into a spatial language. The interventions remain restrained and yet atmospherically intense. By interweaving photographic surfaces with architectural structures, they generate situations that renegotiate the relationship between space, image, and body. Ideas that once motivated early conceptual art—reproducibility and seriality—are present in Carlén’s work, yet they are abstracted and transferred into spatial terms. She situates her practice at the intersection of photographic vision and sculptural consciousness. The space is not understood as a neutral shell but as an active partner, rendered newly legible and experientially palpable through precise interventions.