ROCHESTER, MN.- Known for her cutting-edge ceramic swork, Swedish artist Henny Linn Kjellberg has created an original, site-specific installation called Critical Mass that considers dual interpretations of this frequently used term. As described by Kjellberg: “Critical mass is most often used within nuclear science to describe the smallest amount of fissile material for a sustained nuclear chain reaction. It is also used as a sociodynamic term to describe the existence of sufficient momentum in a social system, such that the momentum becomes self-sustaining and creates further growth. Critical Mass reflects on the idea of the growth of human knowledge and the force of the group dynamic such as political movements and uprisings, and how actions and events sometimes can grow fast, or out of control, with either positive or negative outcomes.”

Critical Mass is made of approximately 1,000 thin, paper-like white porcelain sheets that hang and seem to float from the Rochester Art Center Atrium’s 50-foot ceiling in a dense cluster. On each sheet is black underglazed text from the 1651 politicalphilosophical book Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes.

Henny Linn Kjellberg holds a BFA from Denmark’s Design School Bornholm, and an MFA from Konstfack – the University College of Arts and Craft in Stockholm, Sweden. She has also been a guest student at SHKS – the National University College of Arts and Craft in Norway. Since 2000 she has been active in various fields within the visual arts, such as installation, performance art and traditional commission work. She has shown her work at galleries and museums in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Thailand, Canada and the US and has been an artist in residence and guest artist several times at the International Ceramic Research Centre in Denmark and the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada.

Although trained a ceramic artist, Henny Linn Kjellberg has often collaborated with artists in the performance field. In order to cross boundaries between the art forms and widen the concept of stage design, she has created ceramic objects that have been used as costume and installation art, as well as set design. In this context she has been researching ceramics and sound, in collaboration with the American composer Ellen Lindquist and Danish percussionist Birgit Løkke, through the development of a set of porcelain percussion instruments. She has also created the set designs for the project Dream Seminar, a new piece for music-theatre based on the work of contemporary Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer.