Fenna Noordenbos

"Ornament has always appealed to me; styles such as Baroque, Art Nouveau and Art Deco are a major source of inspiration for my work. Symmetry, repetition, fragmentation, simplification, complication, transformation and recombination of organic forms are key characteristics of ornament within the Western tradition. In my work, I try to translate these characteristics—which are often associated with applied art—into the present day and give them a place within autonomous art.

One way I do this is by combining traditional formal language with technology. The subjects I explore also play an important role in this. My work often focuses on themes for which there is no clear answer, but in which I try to get a grip on something I do not fully understand myself. Examples of this are time, connectedness and loss.

Perhaps it is precisely this ambiguity that makes ornament so appealing to me. In ‘The language of ornament’, Trilling describes how ornament shifts the focus from representation to surface and pattern, causing the viewer’s gaze to move across the whole rather than focusing on a single point.

Consequently, ornament feels to me like a fitting way to give form to the experiences and feelings I wish to share. Ornament can blur the illusion of depth and space by creating a continuous visual movement. In this lies a form of indeterminacy: the choice not to offer a clear spatial focal point, but rather to allow the viewer to disappear into the ornament. This lack of clarity of focus suits the ambiguity of the subjects I choose."