Profiles

"Sivert's profiles have become something of a signature, not least due to the renown they gained after first being presented as a sculptural and visual representation of himself – in the form of a line rotated 360° – in connection with Riksutställningen's Multikonst in 1968.

He himself has recounted that the starting point for the series of profile sculptures he produced over a number of years was originally a single point, perhaps placed in the middle of his forehead. This point was then extended into a line that followed his facial and body profile, from the highest point of his crown to the tip of his toe. The line was then allowed to rotate around its "own axis," whereby the body transformed from a two-dimensional line into a three-dimensional form – from line to volume. The profile could thus be turned out in various materials and also cast in plastic or metal.

Sivert has since explored the resulting form in several variations: as an upright or seated, solid object, but also as a hollowed-out volume where the forms themselves create the contour. He has also shifted the profiles in different directions. One could say that the profiles can thus be perceived as both "convex and concave."

He has also created several series of graphic prints where profile drawings form pattern-like surfaces. The profiles overlap each other in intricate patterns and are sometimes placed within perspectival landscapes.
Whether Sivert ever came into contact with the American illustrator and satirical cartoonist Charles Dana Gibson (1867–1944) is unclear. There is, however, a parallel, humorous interpretive perspective in their shared interest in observation as an artistic starting point.

Gibson is primarily known for his drawings of the so-called Gibson Girls – an image of the modern American ideal woman around the turn of the 20th century. With her elegant and self-assured demeanor, she could captivate a man's gaze, as in the telling cartoon "A Gentleman's Dilemma" from 1900. Gibson published his illustrations in Life magazine and in other major national publications for more than three decades.

Sivert much later became aware of Gibson through a letter from his friend, the architect Åke Wallgård, dated December 15, 1994. The letter contained a copy of a newspaper clipping with Gibson's drawing, along with a Christmas greeting."
/JÖ

Among the source material for his own "profiles" was a series of photographs – style studies – of Sivert as a silhouette by his friend and photographer Wilhelm Rapp in 1963.