Anne Knutsen
IN-BETWEEN
The Window Room
26.02.–12.04.2026
Anne Knutsen uses a shaft loom to create textiles in a minimalist visual language. With the qualities of the yarn and the loom as means, she seeks to give the woven surfaces immaterial qualities. Her works, often in large formats, facilitate fleeting and unstable affects that depend on the angle of light and the viewer’s position in the room.
In recent years Knutsen has concentrated on weaving colour. Unlike painting, where the colour lies on top of the support material, the colour in weaving is the material itself. A woven textile is inherently three-dimensional, and the woven colour is built thread by thread. The quality of the yarn and the binding of the weave affect the colour’s appearance.
IN-BETWEEN presents a series of textiles in small formats. All the works are woven with linen yarn dyed in the same two shades of yellow and blue and with the same weaving technique. The subtle variations in the series result from how the strands are mixed and how the combinations are organised and distributed in each textile. Through small displacements, changes in density, and in the transitions and breaks between yellow and blue, the woven colour is set in motion.
Anne Knutsen (b. 1956, Bergen) lives and works in Ski and Tistedal. She received her diploma from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 1987, where alongside her own artistic practice she was Associate Professor in textile art from 1998 to 2018. In 2024 she exhibited at the art associations in Kongsberg and Verdens Ende, Tjøme. Knutsen has also exhibited at Soft galleri, Kunstnerforbundet, Trondheim Art Museum, and RAM galleri. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Norway and internationally, including the Autumn Exhibition, The Annual Exhibition, and Contextile 2022, Portugal. Her works are included in the collections of the National Museum of Norway, National Museum of Decorative Arts and Design (Nordenfjeldske Kunstindustrimuseum), and Statens Konstråd, Sweden. Knutsen has also done several public art commissions, including works for the upper secondary schools of Byåsen and Molde.
Can I create light by mixing strands of yarn, just as the Neo-impressionists did with dots of colour? Which shades of the two colours can produce coloured over-light? And which shades give the shiny linen yarn room to play? How little is needed to make the colour move? How intense can it be? What lies in-between the coloured strands, the loom and me?
Can the woven colour be transparent and opaque simultaneously? Can different combinations of the same shades smoulder, glow or shine? Can the colour detach from the material?
While blue ranges from the bright daytime sky to blue-black night, yellow turns into something else if it becomes dark. And while blue can both recede and advance, yellow always radiates. Between the two colours, there’s a vast space that ranges from the ethereal and luminous to the heavy and smouldering, from the life-affirming and hopeful to the dense and dying, from the intensely assertive to the withdrawn and dissolved.
I’ve chosen light green.
The dyed linen thread is round and beautiful and both light and dark inside. In the transition from yarn to woven colour, it’s surprising how dark it becomes. The dye baths must be weak. Tiny variations in the shades – barely visible to the eye – alter the woven colour.
I use a warp-faced technique. This means the decisions are made when the loom is set up, and the result can’t be seen until the textile is pressed with a cold mangle. To weave is to combine. To take all my knowledge and skills and combine them with what I believe and sense. The loom answers, often in unexpected and surprising ways. Some things can be tweaked and adjusted during the weaving process. Others I discontinue, and yet others I am challenged by and pursue in the next warp.
– And some pursue me –