Strictly speaking, drawing is a result of lines on a surface, actual signs of a drawing tool. A conceptual expansion of the drawing’s scope of action, most recently also through light and sound, combined with a very precise mental approach and performance, are the characteristics of Ane Mette Hol’s work. She concentrates on the materiality of the drawing tools and the visual and ontological ambivalence of reality. What exactly are we looking at?
Using pencils and pens, Ane Mette Hol recreates paper-based and printed material down to the tiniest, minute detail; notebooks, rolls of paper, sheet music or photocopies. Hol recreates exact copies of various riffraff, such as used masking tape, sandpaper worn thin or a paint-stained sheet of wrapping paper – insignificant residue from artistic production and assembly. The complete craftsmanship and control over the elements used speak of the relationship between unique works and mechanical reproductions, content and void, optical conventions and illusion. The copy is remade into an exclusive original through Hol’s invested time and meticulous work. There is also a special visual sensibility and perception ability in this method. The amount of work alone elegantly reverses the mass of trivial products. Exhibited in a gallery, these illusory works occupy an unclear position between pre-studies, production and result. Nothing here is superfluous to the eye, but Hol’s works remain productively open to possible interpretations – of our experienced reality and everything art history is constructed of.
.
.