Behind a field out of town, the acclaimed artist Nadine Byrne and architect Johan Meisel have raised their sculpture Portal, by which they want to explore, through the means of sculpture, the many facetted meaning of the threshold.

Deriving from the Latin porta meaning entrance, the word portal is also imbued with mythological and mystic meanings as entrances to other worlds, temporalities, or modes of existence. As a structure, as well as a sculpture, there is a built-in performativity to it as it proposes by its very existence that you move through it.

In its complexity, the moving-through, at once entering and leaving, can allude to ritual practices in which the movement through becomes a signifier of change or re-birth. The portal is itself a threshold, and as such a place of transition that can lead to other personal states, dimensions, or states of consciousness.

The sculpture Portal is made in part by materials collected from the installation site, creating a site-specificness to it that engages with the local environment and landscape thoroughly.

Nadine Byrne is an artist whose practice includes sculpture, moving and still images, textiles, drawing, sound composition, and writing.

Johan Meisel is an architect and carpenter specializing in fine woodwork.

Working together as a duo allows their respective practices to intersect in a shared interest in materiality and how spatiality is created through inscribing space with meaning.

Photo: Sorgearbete still