Hole in One

A rock with a hole inside

A resin casting of that hole

A painting of the hole with the use of pigments extracted from the rock

During my summer stay in Salangen 2023, I found a feldspar rich granite rock, close to the place I lived. It appealed to me in colour and shape. The pinkish to white gradients together with darker spots made it appear amost humanly. The shape, molded over hundred thousands of years, has the quality of an archetype stone. Egg shaped, with enough imperfections to not be machine made.

In search of the space in stones and rocks and as a preparation on drilling in stones and splitting them, I’ve decided to drill a hole in this rock by hand. To get a feeling of the hardness and strenght of the stone and get the experience of doing it. It took me three hours to get completely through the stone with the use of a hammer and a 14 mm drill bit. The bottom part of the rock came loose in four bigger parts.

With liquid silicon I casted the handmade hole as an attempt to visualize and materialize the created space in the rock. From this cast I made a mold in order to cast the hole in epoxy resin. This cast didn’t get polished to get it glas clear, but kept it as it was, with a rough and matt outside, so it’s not transparant but also not opaque. It looks like a ghost type of material. Difficult to define, just like the hole and its existence.

On the wall hangs a painting on an MDF panel. A flattened image of the hole from the rock was first hand milled in a birch panel. The created deepening in the panel, got filled up with epoxy resin which is coloured with pigments made from the dust of drilling in the rock.