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[June 30th
2002]
Exhibition
(left) Kirstine Roepstorff Hidden Truth collage, 2002
(right) Judit Ström
Kirstine Roepstorff and Judit Ström
at Vestsjællands Kunstmuseum
Text by curator at Vestsjællands Kunstmuseum
Christine Buhl Andersen. Images:
Bo gisselø.
Vestsjællands Kunstmuseum
Storgade 9, DK-4180 Sorø
Tel. + 45 57 83 22 29
www.vestkunst.dk
museum@vestkunst.dk
Tue-Sun 1pm-4pm
June 22nd - August 18th 2002
Hidden Truths
To continue our long tradition of making the most important contemporary
art a clear priority at Vestsjællands Kunstmuseum, we have invited
two young artist Kirstine Roepstorff and Judit Ström
to take part in our summer exhibition; based on the idea of creating
a dialogue between them. Kirstine Roepstorff and Judit Ström both
started out as part of a Danish art scene, which has been thriving
with talent and energy in recent time; each of them making a convincing
impression from their present bases in Berlin and Copenhagen.
For Kirstine Roepstorff and Judit Ström the notion of a dialog is
a challenge from the perspective of their very different artistic
expression and art practice. While Kirstine Roepstorff can be described
as an artist working within a broad range of styles, using a wide
display of mediums and materials, Judit Ström is entirely a painter
who has accomplished renewing a style of expressionism, characterized
by both ease and great vigor in her work.
When a meeting between the work of Kirstine Roepstorff and Judit
Ström seems such an evident exhibition project, then it's because
there is a common field of signification to be found within their
immediate differences - an affinity. In this way the title of the
exhibition Hidden Truths is a discrete attempt to encircle
this field; creating a theme, which they each have investigated
through their contributions to the exhibition. The theme of the
exhibition being reinforced exactly where their differences converge.
The exhibition title Hidden Truths refers to the fact that
these two artists continually attempt to express and reveal those
psychological, sociological and political structures within society
and culture, which both consciously and unconsciously constitute
the framework of the imaginary possibilities, of dreams and the
way of life of contemporary people.
Judit Ström mainly develops the idea of something hidden on a psychological
and existential level. The closed eyes of her figures, the dreamlike
icon quality of the images, and the often ambiguous titles, lead
us to contemplate human conditions oscillating somewhere between
awareness and dream, ecstasy and absence. I never told the truth,
so I could never tell a lie is one of her cryptic statements,
and like in the world of fairytales, we are left to ponder over
mankind's deepest instincts, and archetypes. We have the choice
between turning our back on them or letting them influence our perception
and sensibility.
Kirstine Roepstorff's almost anthropological practice is to collect
images, stories and materials, which enter into new connections
in her work; taken apart and revealed as constructions while at
the same time being given completely new meanings. In this way there
is a connection to the French culture critic Roland Barthes, who
in his book Mythologies from 1957 claimed that the function of the
constant production of myths within society is to confirm and certify
existing power relations and social structures within culture. While
Barthes still believed in the objectivity of science, it seems that
the point Kirstine Roepstorff is making is that people for better
or for worse surround themselves with fictions that they have created
themselves.
Kirstine Roepstorff
Kirstine Roepstorff Wall installation,
black colour on plaster, with Sphinx, pyramid, sun and the sentance:
"Telling the truth does not mean the
whole truth" as well as mysterious anagrams. Titel: Without
titell, 2002, 2,7 x 1,5 m
An ornamental and delicate expression; in a fairytale
world of silver glitter, stardust and spangles is often united with
severe black humour and confrontational thoughtfulness in the diverse
work of Kirstine Roepstorff. As an artist she alternates between
creating installations, paintings, collages, textile work and objects,
using traditional techniques of painting and drawing as well as
sewing and embroidery.
Kirstine Roepstorff
Hidden Truth 2002
An amorphous hybrid between an alien from outer space and an exotic
plant growth, looks like it's going to land in a gigantic mountainous
landscape, which spans four meters across the wall in "". This is
a cosmic and surreal fantasy, visualized in a scenery of almost
filmic format. It is a play with different levels of reality with
Kirstine Roepstorff adding on bits to this reality, or rather to
a version of reality; the wallpaper landscape representing a manmade
dream about reality; a "readymade" taken from a world where images
are produced to create an illusion.
Kirstine Roepstorff
from The Beautiful Wonders of Life 2001
The fact that this illusion is beautiful but also contains an element
of repressive terror is a central point in Kirstine Roepstorff's
collage series The Beautiful Wonders of Life from 2002; a
series of collages made out of glittered images from the magazine
National Geographic. Images that reproduce a bizarre aesthetics
of life and culture in third world countries. In Roepstorff's work
this is seen as a kind of imperialism; romanticizing poverty, bringing
our sense of reality out of focus. Here there is no room for the
poor people of the world, only delectable close up photography of
the exotic vegetation in their back yard is shown. Kirstine Roepstorff
has adopted this strategy of seductive exquisiteness to transfix
the covetous infringement of mankind on nature and fellow people,
the artist letting them cry their gleaming crocodile tears.
Rearranging the exhibition space, Kirstine Roepstorff spun a silver
thread back and forth between points on the floors and walls with
her string sculptures - a strategy reminiscent of a spider spinning
it's web. The both claustrophobic and wonderful quality of these
sculptures is their optical fascination and fragility. With these
sculptures Kirstine Roepstorff says "My world does not exist", implying
that the world we constantly try to understand and maintain is relative,
depending on who has the power to define it.
Kirstine Roepstorff from Weekend Series
2002
Together with various assertions touching on the politics of gender,
the elements of handicraft aesthetics has characterized Kirstine
Roepstorff as a feminist artist, following the tradition of Eva
Hesse, Rosemarie Trockel and Janine Antoni. But it would be wrong
to characterize Kirstine Roepstorff's work entirely from the perspective
of a feminist practice. Her carefully constructed work refers to
those structures of society, which people use to navigate with,
consciously or unconsciously. It is a condition that sociologist
Anthony Giddens calls "reflexive modernity" where no permanent truths
exist because statements put forward as scientific fact one day
can be rejected by other scientific facts the day after. As recently,
when it was questioned whether man actually set foot on the moon
in 1969; the images we know so well from TV might in fact be fictions,
produced as part of a political strategy during the cold war. Kirstine
Roepstorff's point is that people for better or for worse surround
themselves with fictions. The same mechanisms of seduction were
at play during the Golf war, and are similar to accounts of recent
sightings of the Lock Ness monster. But just like Kirstine Roepstorff's
string sculptures can be unravelled, these stories can also be taken
apart and exposed as fictions. The question is what is left after
that.
JUDIT STRÖM
(left) Judit Ström When I close my
eyes I can still hear your voice 2002, Acryllic on canvas, 240
x 240 cm
(right) Judit Ström Striking 2002, Acryllic on
canvas, 140 x 170 cm
Judit Ström represents an expressive and colourful style of figurative
painting. Her acrylic paintings function as vehicles of powerful
expression while at the same time being screens for the projection
of psychological forces and energies. Judit Ström's imagery refers
to the body as well as the soul; the sensibility, pleasure and pain
of the body merging with an inner secret universe of dreams and
nightmares, ecstasy and horror.
Balancing on a razors edge between glory and gloom, Judit Ström
allows a face or a figure to stand out in her large scale paintings.
With their backs turned or their eyes shut, the painted figures
are detached from the viewer, set apart from this world - like in
dreams. This condition is underlined in her earlier work by either
a vague halo hovering above the heads of the figures or by the elusiveness
of the background behind the motive, like in an icon where the holy
person is placed on a setting of divine gold.
Exhibition view
Judit Ström, including It's the way your shoulders
shake
and what they're shaking for 2002, Acryllic on canvas, 130 x
90 cm, samt When I close my eyes
I can still see your face 2002, Acryllic on canvas, 130 x 90
cm
One of the important potentials in Judit Ström's work lies precisely
between the presence of a recognizable motif and lurking abstraction.
This applies to the abstract character of the backgrounds of the
paintings as well as the figurative elements, such as blouses, dresses,
hair and shoes; where intense concentrations of colour seem almost
to explode, as if the figurative element is about to dissolve into
pure abstraction. Here traces from the process of painting stand
out clearly in the form of paint running across the surface of the
image; in splashes and drips, which have been thrown or chucked
there, and not least in the often wild and spiky hair, where the
paint is smudged and smeared onto the canvass with her fingers.
Despite this fierce and expressive quality in certain areas of the
paintings there is a lightness about them, which is rare for this
type of expressionistic painting. The vibrant colours and animated
traces from the act of painting are balanced out in the overall
composition when positioned up against more empty areas, or where
the brushstrokes may be highly visible but seem deliberate and intentional.
Also the painted line that defines the contour of the figures plays
an important role, despite its almost sketch like fragility, just
as elements of patterning sometimes seem to stand out from the clothes
and shoes, continuing outward into the rest of the painting, like
a floating layer of abstraction.
Judit Ström Transient
2002, Acryllic on canvas,
130 x 90 cm
Judit Ström's imagery has it's own quiet and magical atmosphere.
But at the same time words and text play a significant part in the
titles of the paintings, often making up ambiguous sentences characterised
by a narrative quality and humour. Nightmary and the red-haired
asskicker and Blink your eyes and I'll be gone or When
I close my eyes I can still see your face, indicate that the
closed eyes could be an indication of intense absorption rather
than detachment. At times it is as if the titles of the work function
like a fence around these innocent figures in the paintings, who
can seem as defenceless as sleeping children or meditating monks.
Alternately the murky pasts of some of the figures are hinted at;
ecstatic excess, the transgression of taboo, playing with innocence
and the fall of man, just like this is represented symbolically
in the world of fairytales.
In this respect the work of Judit Ström can be seen as female imagery;
the assembly of various female identities being implied in her work,
from the image of The Madonna to the woman who lives out her demons
and corporeality with the overt use of makeup and coloured hair
- devoted to intoxicating the senses. Judit Ström's style of painting
is therefore not only related to a tradition, which leading through
American abstract expressionism points back to painters like Edvard
Munch and Egon Schiele, but also has an affinity with female representatives
of contemporary art such as Cindy Shermann and Pipilotti Rist.
More:
Kirstine Roepstorff on the Internet:
www.lawoffice4.com
www.sparwasserhq.de
www.vesterdal.suite.dk
All copyrights for the above text and images belong to Vestsjællands
Kunstmuseum
Translated by Sophie Pucill
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