Margrethe Odgaard

Textile and colour designer Margrethe Odgaard works with colour as a full, sensory perception. With her intense focus on the interaction of colour, material and light, she aims to become clearer about how we as humans experience and emotionally connect with the world around us.

Odgaard shares her time equally between commercial collaborations and an artistic practice based on self-initiated research. On her client list are companies as Kvadrat, Muuto, Montana, HAY, and IKEA, and her exhibition catalogue includes solo exhibitions at Willumsen’s Museum (DK), Röhsska Museum (SE), Designmuseo Helsinki (FI), and Munkeruphus (DK).

In 2015 she received the Three-year work grant from The Danish Arts Foundation and in 2016 she was awarded the prestigious Torsten and Wanja Söderberg Award (SE).

Before setting up her design studio in 2013, Odgaard worked as a printing assistant at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, USA, followed by seven years as textile designer in the French fashion company EPICE. She graduated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Design in 2005 with additional studies at Rhode Island School of Design in USA.

Margrethe Odgaard Studio
Sturlasgade 14 T, 2.
Islands Brygge
2300 Copenhagen S
Denmark

Studio enquiries
hello@margretheodgaard.com

Black Squares (Tiefschwarz), 2019

MO BST 19

1/3

Malevich’s painting ‘Black Square’ from 1915 is often referred to as the zero point of painting. Instead of looking at the black colour as a reset black hole, ‘Black Squares (Tiefschwarz)’ seeks to show new depths and shades of the colour black. By letting go of absolute control in the dying process and letting the materials take over part of the process, the colour steps out of the black empty nothingness and into a world full of drama and poetry.

Through experiments, Odgaard developed a reactive dying technique that allows the dyestuff to continue working after she finished printing. By leaving the thickener out of the printing recipe and sprinkling the black dyestuff directly onto the wet fabric soaked in chemicals and covered with a plastic frame, Odgaard obtained a technique where the dyestuff migrates to the dryer part of the fabric. As a result, the black dyestuff reveals turquoise and pink tones at the edge of the otherwise jet-black Tiefschwarz pigment.

90x90cm / 100% linen, black dyestuff / Series of 3.