Vivian Høi Nielsen specializes in handmade clay sculptures, which are then painted and glazed with soft pastel colours. Her works revolve around contrasts and tension – contrasts between the durability of clay and the fragility of the form of her works, between roughness of clay and smoothness of glaze, between the raw colour of clay and the light pastel shades the sculptures are painted with.
“Eternity and ephemerality go hand in hand, pulling and pushing one another, and are often perceived as opposites. The form of my world is based on the concrete and specific; “that, which is”. It might be the waves that beat upon the shore only to retreat a moment later – almost like breathing – timeless and ever-changing. Trails on a sandy beach. A stone in the water changing the current. To me, such universal forms and phenomena represent underlying order. They create a framework which provides me with a space to reflect upon and explore my material, the clay. A story begins – existence, clay and the world is in play. Something becomes, something dies – something is visible, something is hidden – a recognition of something unfamiliar – a memory of something forgotten, something unknown.”
Vivian Høi Nielsen