INSTALLATIONS AND COMMISSIONS

Gentofte Art Library, Denmark, 1986.

Installation Abaca Sheet Walls

9 plexiglass walls with handmade paper,  each 250 x 150 cm.

The transparency of the paper is refracted by the light, which gives the space a floating, dream – like character “lifting up” the space.

A new concept of the term “wall” has been achieved.

Drivhuset Ordrupgaard 1988

 In the Hothouse

The greenhouse was reconstructed with new walls made of handmade plant paper on plexiglass front panes, and 9 columns in the room, on which were placed 9 aquariums with diverse paper pulp that slowly moved throughout the 3 months the installation lasted.

For Anne Vilsboell, the creation process of handmade paper symbolizes the act of creating new earth surfaces from liquid to solid form. The floating paper pulp in the aquariums in the installation symbolized new ground masses for the creation of new earth surfaces. The walls of the greenhouse were partially covered with transparent plant sheets, which let the light penetrate the interior space and formed flowing patterns that changed constantly according to the light’s movements. The handmade sheets were partially dyed and did not change colour, nor did the sheets weather, but retained their original appearance.

Anne Vilsboell’s working title for the project was “In the Hothouse”, which related to growing in a greenhouse, a delicate and sensitive environment that promotes growth and also to the Earth’s historical greenhouse periods when the planet was heated.

Skaering Church, Århus/ Egå with Architect Johannes Exner, 1996

27 glass doors  with handmade paper, commission.

Handmade paper is glued onto 27 glass panels of folding doors, thus producing countless formations and figures, which change their appearance with the changing light. The cross as symbol stands out as luminous watermarks, when caught by the light. The basic compositional element in the ornamentation is the floor plan of the  church, which has been transferred as reflections in the glass panels. The philosophical aspects that may be associated with the nature of paper are centred on the life of human beings from birth to life.

Foss Electric, Hillerød, 1996

Ni Tid. Handmade Nepalese Daphne paper on windows..

Measuring apparatuses of the kind used for carrying out tests provided the inspiration for the pure forms, created by 9 glass plates with handmade paper. A microscopic world is enclosed.

CONSTRUCTIONS

Swans and Doves.

Swan and dove vanes are used as a support for construction with handmade paper.

Various selected installation projects

PAPER HAS A MEMORY, 2022

Throughout her four-decade art practice, Anne Vilsbøll has investigated the qualities and capabilities of paper as a material in both painting and sculpture. She has studied many different papermaking traditions around the world, which in turn suffuse the formal language of her compositions and her thematic considerations.

In Paper Has a Memory, Vilsbøll explores the origins, history, and uses of paper. The material itself is the central locus of meaning, and it is brought into focus through various sculptures and objects that consider our symbiotic relationship with nature.

The group of works entitled Containers of Life and Death, which consists of urns made from seagrass, kozo, and manila hemp, illustrates the transience of human life, while at the same time evoking the all-encompassing system of nature, in which the new is inevitably born from that which once was. As humans, we are bound to each other and to nature, and our choices will always resonate through the ecosystems of which we are a part. The series comprising My Secret Garden investigates paper as a medium and a storyteller. The textured sheets convey narratives embedded within the very fibers and structures of the paper – organic stories about nature, made by nature.

The Paper Academy in Gilleleje, Denmark, serves as Anne Vilsbøll’s studio, where she creates commissioned works and experiments with new practical applications and aesthetic possibilities of bio-based pulp. Additionally, The Paper Academy operates as a space for exhibitions, talks, and art residencies centered around facilitating and inspiring potential new approaches to paper that challenge our accepted conventions.

Various selected installation projects

Jute and handmade paper

A fusion of old Indian gunny bags have been treated with handmade pulp to create  a strong, tactile surface, used for embroidery, sowing or pulp drawings.

Lienzo

The series Lienzo – from destruction to creation is inspired and developed by the bull, the bullfight and its history. The bull has been worshipped in numerous early religions. Ritual sacrifice of the beasts in one form or another goes back to before the days of written history.

In her art Anne Vilsboell has often drawn on mythological subject matter and included the animal in her art.

Living in Provence since 15 years she is inspired by its taurine traditions. Visits to the Arles Arena awakened her earlier fascination as a young girl attending bullfights in Spain.

A bullfight contains an image of our world. It is about sacrifices and loss, life and death. The painter must rule his nature in order to create, which can be compared to tame the bull.

Her fascination is shared by numerous artists in history: Titian, Goya, Picasso, Francis Bacon, Roy Lichtenstein and many others.
It is believed that the Spanish matador Francisco Romero (1700 – 1763) introduced the red cape (muleta) into bullfighting in around 1726. It is believed that the muleta developed from a white linen or hemp cloth called lienzo used to divert the attention of the bull.
Over centuries a very large number of passes was invented by the matadors, who according to their taste, used either blue or yellow muletas. In 1928 – in Madison Square Garden, NY, the matadors, dictated by the society protective animal societies, used green muleta.

With her series Lienzo Anne Vilsboell has created a colour scale with which one can combine one’s own overlapped hangings according to one’s own taste. The lienzo = muleta has developed from an instrument of protection to an instrument of domination.