Diana Orvning

She is in the middle of creating large, sculptural art curtains for a restaurant and needs headroom for her creations. Along the walls are paintings lined up, also covered in textiles. Many look finished, but in some frames you can only glimpse a final result. Together, the works begin to create an image, a small clue, of its creator.

– Textile art has always been a natural way for me to express myself. Both my parents have worked in the arts, so it was a language that I developed early on and has always been a natural part of me. A language I understand," says Diana Orving.

In the past, a large part of Diana's work was designing clothes and she still has a clothing label under her own name, but for the past few years she has been focusing more on textile art. It's an organic process that has led her here depending on her personal development and what she has been most curious about and wanted to explore.

– Fashion as a format is more restrictive and is often more about product than expression. My entrance to all creation has always been my interest in form and expression, the creative part.

Diana is driven by a natural curiosity. She follows her impulses and works with both improvisation and rehearsal. She lets her intuition guide her and rarely works from a predetermined end result.

– My work is an exploration, a search for an expression, a dynamic, a temperament. I seek understanding and follow my hands on a journey of discovery and along the way they make me associate with different things. I like to work abstractly but in what can be associative for me. She continues.

– I like an aesthetic that is both open and ambiguous. I never want to tell the viewer what the work represents, but I find it interesting to see what arises in the encounter. Both my encounter with the work but also other people's encounter with my works.

Perhaps it is simply the way the brain works, but there is something embodied in Diana's paintings and the encounter with her paintings feels very intimate.

– I want it to feel intimate, that there is some kind of contact. What is it that makes you read a gaze or sense a presence? I'm very curious about that. It's so natural to want to read the human form.

Diana describes her creative process as one long inhalation and exhalation, where both parts must exist and interact. She describes it as an alternation between periods when she fills up with inspiration and allows all forms of external stimulation to inspire her. At the same time, some periods involve constantly leaving work behind. You can clearly see Diana's design language. Abstractly composed textile patterns that evolve as you get closer and seem to strive to jump out of their framework. A movement that cannot be limited to the two-dimensional. She runs her hand over the works as she talks about them.

– My thoughts have travelled along the lines of Braille. The works are a tactile surface of layers, movement and change. There is information even if you close your eyes. I have worked in double layers in silk, creating sculptural compositions that I have then painted in oil. My painting in this series works more like a light setting. It throws light on the shape to emphasise it. I think of it as an image in a development bath in a darkroom. All of a sudden the shape emerges.

Diana had a solo exhibition at Dusty Deco in 2017 and has previously shown individual works at Nordiska Galleriet.