Grethe Soerensen City Light / Rush Hour

With the City Light / Rush Hour tapestries, Grethe Sørensen has translated photographic pixels into threads, video recordings into weavings.
In the darkness, physical things disappear and man-made light from neon signs, traffic lights, shops and advertising signs start to trace their own magic patterns and forms in the night. Video recordings of urban night light from Shanghai, New York and Copenhagen form the basis of
these unique wall tapestries, which were made at the Tilburg textile Museum by Grethe Sørensen between 2010-2011. The unfocused camera transforms the realism of the traffic lights into soft patterns of circular, half-transparent light surfaces. The light from the illuminated shops traces large foggy shapes that flow like soft colored clouds. With shifting impressions of oncoming traffic and sudden deep glances into dark side alleys, the tapestries are translating the poetry of the living image with its slowly streaming movement into contemporary urban dream landscapes. By inventing the method to translate pixels into threads, Grethe Sørensen has revolutionized the art of tapestry by creating photo-generated images of striking beauty that were not possible before.
Born in 1947 in Viborg in Denmark, Grethe Soerensen is considered as a pioneer in the field of textile art combining high technologies with traditional craftsmanship, and her works are represented in important private and public collections such as the Danish Design Museum, the New Carlsberg Foundation, the Trapholt Art Museum and the Boraas Museum in Sweden. The City Light / Rush Hour tapestries are making their first Parisian in Galerie Maria Wettergren in a solo exhibition from May 31 to July 21 2012.


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