Karl Hallberg

This sculpture is part of a series called Faceless – I use found objects and recycled cast aluminium to create objects that both leave room for the imagination of the viewer and at the same time talk about the force of human belief, conviction or imagination. By leaving some features blank I let the viewer fill in the blanks. The viewers must decide if they possess force, it´s up to the viewer to find out what kind.

The casting process is quite crude, insolation foam board is cut into sculptures and buried in sand, and after the molten aluminium is poured onto the foam which instantly evaporates and leaves a void for the metal.  When cooled down, the sculptures – now transformed into metal are excavated. All materials will affect the outcome- The sand in which the metal is shaped leaves marks and sticks to the surface of the sculptures. The gases developed by evaporating the foam creates unplanned distortions. All surfaces are left as the process made them – in this way the nature of the materials is present in parallel with the intangible force.

I am an artist, crafter and educator with a material and craft-based practice.

My works are often sculptural installations with found materials that have been processed with craft methods and techniques. Material and form are often part of narratives found in the human life and our culture.

In my social practice I use craft and sloyd both as techniques for making but also for bringing people together, to see their own environment from a perspective of the producer rather than the consumer, to enable and create local capabilities and new communities.

To me material and craft are both the means of production and a way of experiencing the world. Craft as sculpture is a way to communicate with many of the human senses at once and propose new experiences of the world.