SASKIA NEUMAN GALLERY

Plow your fields, keep your enemies close

Plow your fields, keep your enemies close is Swedish artist Pia Ferm's debut exhibition at Saskia Neuman Gallery, and her first solo exhibition in Sweden. Born 1986 in Lysekil, Sweden Pia Ferm graduated from the art academy Staedel Schule in Frankfurt in 2020, where she currently resides and works.

The artist uses a range of different materials and methods in her artistic practice, including a focus on weaving and tufting, however also employing stone and marble in her sculptural practice. Ferm often builds her own looms, both for woven and tufted works, in varying sizes. Each work begins with a sketch, drawing or watercolor, which becomes the basis and origin of each woven or tufted work. According to the artist, the exhibition is about 'herself, because it always is to a certain extent'. Ferm wants to explore strategies around her work and process; 'it's always about my work, about studio work, about an undercurrent of thoughts regarding value and time, about the strangely elusive concept of currency and attempting to pull it all together... conceptually and practically.'

The exhibition presents a suit of new works, including a large and extensive tufted tapestry in the gallery's first space, facing the street. Pia has also created several new smaller woven works, as well as a suite of medium-sized tufted tapestries presented in the gallery's interior space. In tandem with the new textile works, the artist has created marble sculptures that act as a mouthpiece for her ideas regarding her pursuits as an artist, as well as the thoughts that arise via her own reflections on her practice.

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