Tiril Hasselknippe´s staircase is both the stairway to Heaven, the fitness stairclimber in the local gym and the longing and ambition of the Tower of Babel. The drive towards a climax is the theme of many of her semi-abstract works. The basic structures are visible in her sculptures: the staircase, the car, the surf board, are shaped like the essence of the objects – it is for instance the toughness of the car which is in focus in the car series Year of Car and the surf board work Swim Good channels weightlessness.
Inspired by the minimalism of the American West Coast, where the synthetic and the sublime is combined in abstract aesthetics, the artist creates a kind of formal science fiction.
Hasselknippe works with fiction. She has created Stairs for Still Waters Run Deep and the space just outside Magasin´s back entrance. She has been inspired by the sculptural and emotional qualities of the surroundings and not the actual history of the place.
The presence of the staircase in the run-down surroundings seems almost brutal, like materialised feelings. Both architecture and poetry are present in Hasselknippe´s works where mythology and structure become one. In this place she has sensed an atmosphere and a kind of sensibility, which corresponds with her own sense of form.