In Sophie Tottie’s exhibition AiWHEtL, past times in the present materializes through recycling. Residual products such as paint and brushes are repurposed in new works, as well as in reworkings of previous works and text materials.
AiWHEtL is an acronym for the English “As if We Had Everything to Learn.” * The work is based on a study questioning not what it is about but how it works. For example, the relationship between doing and thinking in the light of recycling, reconsidering what has been done and spoke. The ink paintings Sense (Universal (s)) start as much in brush washing as in more abstract environmental studies. Various parts of the working process; news reports, literature, music and abstractions have been transformed into image and ink. Shape and ink production from scratch not only means fabrication but on how both ink and image continue to transform. When the ink is exposed to air it shapes itself onto paper, lines and circles open new associative paths.
Sophie Tottie is an artist and professor of fine art with a focus on drawing and painting at Kungl. The Academy of Fine Arts since 2012.
* From the text: Lygia Clark: A Space Open to Time by Cornelia H. Butler, published in the catalog Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948-1988, by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2014.