Siri Aurdal Dead: Norwegian Artist Dies At 88

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Siri Aurdal, the Norwegian sculptor and painter who turned industrial materials into works of uncommon openness, died on March 31 in Oslo. She was 88. Galleri Riis, which represented her, announced the death on social media and said she was surrounded by friends and family.

Born in 1937 into a prominent artistic family, Aurdal was the daughter of textile artist Synnøve Anker Aurdal (1908–2000), who represented Norway at the 1982 Venice Biennale, and painter Leon Aurdal (1890–1949). Yet her own practice quickly moved beyond lineage. By the late 1960s, she had developed a distinct sculptural language built from plexiglass and reinforced fiberglass, materials associated with Norway's oil industry rather than the studio.

That choice was never merely formal. Aurdal was interested in change - in bodies, in places, and in the social conditions that shape both. She cut and recombined fiberglass elements into flowing ribbons, then expanded that logic into public works designed for children and everyday use. In 1969, after appearing in the Nordic Biennial in Helsinki, she was commissioned to create interactive pieces for Oslo's schools and playgrounds.

Among the best known was Havbølger, or“ocean waves,” the name given to it by students at Trosterud Elementary School. Built from prefabricated, fiberglass-coated polyester pipes originally engineered for the oil sector, the work transformed an industrial system into a landscape for climbing, resting, and moving through. An archival photograph from 1972 shows students scaling its surface, underscoring how directly Aurdal imagined sculpture as lived experience.

Her political commitments were equally clear. Januar 67, also known as February 67, a painted polystyrene work now in the National Museum in Oslo, was conceived in response to the Vietnam War. The piece reflects the same conviction that ran through her larger practice: form could carry social meaning without becoming didactic.

Aurdal's later career confirmed the durability of that vision. She was among six artists included in the Nordic Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale. In a conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist, she described plexiglass as a material that“takes light” well and allows viewers to see themselves and others reflected in green or orange. That interest in reflection - optical, bodily, and social - remained central to her work.

Asked about the shapes that informed her art, Aurdal recalled lessons from her father about imagining the world through simple forms. It was, she suggested, an early education in time, daylight, seasons, and scale. Her own answer to what art might be was characteristically restrained: she favored the line often attributed to Gerhard Richter,“Art is the highest form of hope.”

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