Woodbeds, brimming is a series of unique woodcut prints of triangles, squares and pentagons. These basic geometric shapes are less than neatly formatted like texts or coding into lines that stagger, vibrate, and layer – some characters even fall outside the frame. In the margins of the papers, additional shapes are applied with a pencil like notes into a paperback novel; comments written in the same abstract language as that of the motif.

Some of the works are made from wooden bases that have been used before and cut into anew to make ever wilder, more layered compositions. In this way, the series continues the stories begun in other works, and forges connections between them.

Geometry is always both sign and image, and, as the title suggests, the uneven lines do not only look like texts but also beds, seen from above and brimming with content. Fleckner’s alternative language of shapes indexes bodies, spaces and distances, while engaging in a dialogue with conventional language systems, as an invitation to read, write, think and feel differently. Woodbeds, brimming make a flow of concrete poetry where the chaos of the wooden templates and their augmented prints meet the rigour and precision of geometry.

(2019- ongoing)

Courtesy of the artist and Avlskarl Gallery, Copenhagen

Ester Fleckner (Denmark, 1983). Working from queer and trans epistemologies, Ester Fleckner inverts the value of failure, unfinishedness, and displacement to arrive at chaotic and intuitive ways of knowing. Fleckner employs an abstract aesthetic to counteract normative tendencies to produce ever new and false binaries. As such, Fleckner’s ventures are almost always serial and expressly inquisitive; always morphing along the way towards no particular endpoint. The works can be read as alternative maps for navigating visual and linguistic representation out of rigid categorisation. Fleckner mostly works with woodcut printing – a simple, slow and physical technique that allows for differences, errors and a loss of control. As a natural material, wood is apt for Fleckner’s exploration of the collisions between the body and various cultural norms. Fragments of text or drawing are often added in pencil as interaction or dialogue with the graphics works that are printed by the artist. Fleckner’s practice expands from the woodcuts to include cast concrete sculptures, drawings, text work and performative readings.