Alina Rentsch (b. 1992) lives and works in Stockholm. She holds a BFA from Weißensee Academy of Art, Berlin and graduated with a MFA from Konstfack, Stockholm in 2022. She has participated in exhibitions, programs, and workshops at Ehemalige Postsparkasse, Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab, Vienna; Index–The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm; B7L9 Art Station, Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Tunis; Magito/Suvilahti, Helsinki; Studio Giardini, IASPIS program during the 59th Venice Biennale, Venice; Nordiska Konstförbundet (NKF), Stockholm (all 2022); Salon am Moritzplatz, Berlin; Kl.09, Stockholm (all 2021); and Konsthall C, Stockholm (2019).

Talking in circles

With Talking in circles, Alina Rentsch invites visitors to follow a series of colorful streams of words throughout the exhibition space. The meandering, site-specific chains of letters on the floor appear chaotic at first, but once the reader decides on a line to follow, the multifaceted patterns of idioms propose a rather unconventional navigation through the space. Within this performative encounter of the observers with the rhythmic wordings, the latter are transferred into a third dimension. The reading bodies themselves become an integral part of the installation, partly obscuring the letters with their presence, whilst simultaneously revealing them for distant observers.

Figuring Speech originates from the form and system of cutting patterns; templates from which the parts of a garment, so-called figures, are traced onto fabric before being cut out and assembled. Through rewriting the outlines of the figures with seemingly endless sentences of figures of speech, a configuration results. By using vinyl-letters to apply these sewing pattern shapes onto the floor of the exhibition space, the configuration is turned into a living map – the shapes become walkable guidelines, paths which aim to invite visitors to take detours through their reading, intuitively tracing and performing the spatial pattern.

The collaborative work A Listener is a dialogue of quotations transmitted via voicemails recorded in different sonic contexts. In this way the concept of figuration is gradually outlined; slowly it takes shape and becomes audible. A Listener refers to the connection between writing and speaking whereby the speakers are absent in the moment of the playback–as is usually the case when quoting.

Exercise In Style

The project originates from the form and system of cutting patterns. In tailoring, a cutting pattern is a template from which the parts of a garment are traced onto fabric before being cut out and assembled. Cutting pattern sheets are usually to be found as supplements in the back of tailoring magazines, folded into the size of an A4 and distributed in large numbers. A two-dimensional pattern representing a three-dimensional object, broken down into individual parts. A system of special contour lines, different types of lines, numbers and colours help tracing. In this project, the practical guidelines that are used to transfer shapes – the figures – taken in the literal sense, are turned into a web of text: replaced with different rhetorical patterns, figures of speech, the pattern lines are becoming word lines and result in an interplay of text and textile.