SKIN, SHAPE, SHELTER
Nanna Riis Andersen & Daniela Bergschneider
14 AUG 2026 – 26 SEP 2026
Formation Gallery is pleased to present "Skin, Shape, Shelter", a duo exhibition by Danish artist Nanna Riis Andersen and German-born, Bergen-based artist Daniela Bergschneider. Working across painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics and textiles, the two artists explore the body not as a fixed form, but as something shaped through continuous processes of growth, adaptation and change. Their works investigate the shifting boundaries between interior and exterior, protection and exposure, solidity and fragility.
The exhibition unfolds as an investigation into skin—not simply as a biological surface, but as a membrane: a threshold where matter meets the world. Skin protects, contains and connects. It records time, responds to touch and bears the traces of transformation. Throughout Skin, Shape, Shelter, form is understood as something living rather than fixed. Shapes expand, contract, unfold and dissolve, suggesting that identity itself is continuously negotiated through its relationship with the world around it.
Although working in distinct materials and media, Riis Andersen and Bergschneider share a fascination with organic structures and the invisible systems that shape both bodies and landscapes. Their works move fluidly between the microscopic and the monumental, between the cellular and the cosmic, evoking forms that seem at once biological, geological and otherworldly. Shells, membranes, skeletal structures, coral formations and botanical growth emerge only to dissolve again into abstraction, inviting viewers into a space where recognition remains deliberately unstable.
Daniela Bergschneider constructs her sculptures through a meticulous dialogue between porcelain and hand-dyed translucent nylon. Small hand-built ceramic modules are individually tied into textile membranes, gradually forming larger sculptural organisms that appear simultaneously fragile and resilient. The porcelain functions as an internal skeleton, while the stretched nylon becomes a skin—holding, protecting and binding the forms together. The resulting sculptures seem suspended between expansion and contraction, as though quietly breathing. Familiar materials are transformed into unfamiliar presences, creating what Bergschneider describes as "visual tactility": works that invite not only the gaze but also an embodied, almost visceral response.
Nanna Riis Andersen's paintings similarly inhabit a state of perpetual becoming. Working on silk and paper canvas, she builds luminous surfaces through countless layers of acrylic, ink, coloured pencil and water, allowing forms to emerge gradually from within the material itself. Fragments recalling shells, vertebrae, marine organisms and botanical growth appear and dissolve across translucent fields of colour without ever settling into fixed representation. Recurring spiral forms become a central motif throughout the exhibition. Emerging from the abstract language of the paintings themselves, they evoke shells and protective dwellings as readily as they suggest galaxies, currents of water or fields of energy. The spiral becomes both image and structure—a movement that gathers seemingly chaotic energies into form while remaining open to continual change. Shelter, here, is understood not as enclosure, but as a condition that allows transformation to unfold.
Together, the works propose a world in which growth is inseparable from vulnerability. Shelter is never understood as permanence, but as a temporary condition—a fragile architecture that enables change. Bergschneider's textile membranes stretch around ceramic skeletons just as Riis Andersen's translucent layers of colour gather around shifting forms. Material itself becomes an active language throughout the exhibition. The absorbency of paper, the transparency of silk, the density of porcelain and the elasticity of nylon are not simply carriers of form but participants in its making. Rather than depicting bodies, both artists investigate the processes through which forms come into being: expansion and contraction, accumulation and erosion, emergence and disappearance.
The exhibition resists simple distinctions between abstraction and figuration. Instead, both artists operate within a visual language where recognisable forms continuously dissolve into material, gesture and rhythm. Their works remain open, inviting multiple readings while insisting on the physical experience of looking. Surface becomes depth, softness suggests strength, and fragility reveals its own resilience.
"Skin, Shape, Shelter" ultimately asks how forms come into being—how bodies, landscapes and identities are continually shaped through processes of protection, exposure and change. It is an exhibition about the quiet intelligence of organic systems, the beauty of structures that remain unfinished, and the delicate balance between holding together and letting go.
Photo: Sofus Graae
