Since 2003 Martin Fenne (1964) has developed a very labor-intensive technique in which he sews satin piping together strip by strip. He makes sophisticated use of colour, bearing painters like Giotto and Piero della Francesca in mind who also use colour to vitalize and give volume to their human figures. Over the past two years, Fenne has been working on a new series in which he portrays the four natural elements. The floods in Limburg in the south of the Netherlands were the trigger for the series that implicitely also touches on the climate crisis. In the first work he depicts aquatic plants waving in the flow of a stream, fire is a dramatic forest fire with intense golden red flames that gnaw on black trunks. Earth is depicted as geological deposits in ochres and browns in which a large stone is lodged, air is rendered as a dynamic cloudy sky. With the four works Fenne also refers to the different realms and atmospheres in Dante’s Divine Commedia. They measure 78 x 140 cm and each have an equally large perspex container on the floor with left over cuts of the satin strips. The works on the wall thus get a completely random echo in the same material and colour.

A textile work by Martin Fenne can be seen at Kunsthal Kade Amersfoort in the exhibition Sleep, till January 5, 2025.

Kunsthal KAdE, Eemplein 77, Amersfoort, see: kunsthalkade.nl