Ellen Hyllemose: Redefining Landscapes Through Material and Memory

Hyllemose’s choice of materials plays an important role in her reimagined landscapes. Growing up on a farm, her early exposure to functional materials like hardboard or Masonite shaped her approach. Initially used for painting, these materials later became sculptural elements in her work. "I realized I could slide from flat to volume without changing material," she explains.

Lycra soon entered her practice, offering versatility as both a colorful, textured "paint" and a medium for creating three-dimensional forms. Lycra’s connection to the human body, its role as an "extra skin" in clothing, adds a layer of intimacy to her work. Yet, the material’s often undervalued nature aligns with Hyllemose’s preference for everyday objects. "My materials are often something you would encounter in daily life," she says, reflecting her belief that landscapes are not just natural vistas but encompass our built and domestic environments.

Hyllemose’s sculptures often incorporate objects collected from Denmark’s beaches, where remnants of industrial and domestic life mix with natural elements. Stones, fossils, plastic, and discarded industrial materials become central to her work, forming a poignant commentary on consumption and its consequences. "In some ways, these objects become beautiful," she reflects, "shaped by time in the water." Yet, their beauty is tempered by their origins, trash reshaped by nature. Her Landscape Fetish series exemplifies this duality, presenting found objects as both tactile mementos and evidence of environmental degradation.

This theme is further explored in the works Imagine a Landscape and Transformed Landscape presented at Chart Art Fair in August 2024. These works combined everyday objects, plastic parts, stones, wood, and Lycra, to create striking contrasts that still felt inseparable within the compositions. By integrating such diverse materials, Hyllemose establishes a dialogue between the natural and the industrial, revealing the intricate and often fraught relationships between humans and the landscapes they inhabit. "The materials I use have something in common, whether it’s character, color, or surface similarities," she explains. "This connection allows them to have a conversation, making the contrasts feel unified and meaningful."

Through her work, Hyllemose redefines traditional landscape painting, blending these elements into "new landscapes" that reflect the Anthropocene’s entangled realities. Her sculptures invite viewers to contemplate the relationship between objects, nature, and their transformed meanings in a human-altered world.

Hyllemose’s engagement with space is a defining feature of her practice. In Every Moment – The Right Now, shown at Lundsgaard Estate, she created fields of brown-painted sheets that mimicked the earthy tones of cultivated land. Installed in a cave-like structure, the work merged the natural and the constructed, embodying the transient nature of landscapes. "I often reuse materials from previous works," she explains, underscoring her commitment to transformation. By deconstructing and repurposing, she allows her works to evolve with each exhibition. This approach, shaped by the material properties of Lycra and other functional elements, creates a dialogue between permanence and impermanence, space and form.

Hyllemose sees her work as an opportunity to evoke both poetic and critical reflections. "We all carry the weight of knowing what has gone wrong," she says, referencing environmental challenges. Yet her art aims to balance this awareness with moments of beauty and tactile engagement. "We need poetic moments to connect with ourselves, not just intellectually, but through the body."

At her solo exhibition Spejl, Spejl, Spejl (late 2014) at SPECTA Gallery in Copenhagen, Hyllemose disrupts traditional, static depictions of nature, emphasizing the tactile and transformative qualities of materials. The gallery’s architecture, a space below street level, encourages interaction between the viewer, artwork, and surrounding city. Her centerpiece, installed on the floor, evokes a field in the landscape, compelling viewers to navigate around it, immersing themselves in the dynamic relationship between the artwork and its environment.

"We experience landscapes through a city lens," Hyllemose observes. Her work challenges this perspective, inviting us to reconsider the constructed narratives of nature in our collective memory. By integrating past and present, softness and brutality, her practice offers a layered commentary on our evolving relationship with the environment and ourselves. Through her thoughtful manipulation of materials and space, Hyllemose’s work bridges the poetic and the practical, urging us to rediscover the landscapes we inhabit, not just as viewers, but as participants in their transformation.