LongHouse Talks: Bjorn Amelan

Bjorn’s work invites the viewer into a zone of uncertainty - profuse, relentless, ambiguous: the world! The shapes he creates are suggestive of archaic writing systems (ideograms, pictographs) and live in the liminal space between the real, the evocative and the symbolic.  The marks are primal–sumi ink on unstretched antique hemp sheets, handwoven in France–and the artist uses a process of dialogue with the marks, teasing out shapes, figures, associations through shading and contours. Once finished, the pieces hang like tapestries.  Bjorn is the Creative Director of New York Live Arts, the performance-based art center founded by his husband, choreographer/director Bill T. Jones. "The reference to bodies in motion, which my shapes often suggest, no doubt result from my involvement in the work of our company, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, whose rehearsals and travels I generally attend."