June 14th 2003: Exit 2003

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[June 14th 2003]
Interviews and pictures

Exit 2003
Melou Vanggaard: Anatomie eines Malereiinstallation. 2003. Acrylic, oil and alcyd on canvass, lithography, print and drawing. Variable sizes. (detail)

Exit 2003 at Kunstforeningen
Kopenhagen visited Exit 2003 at Kunstforeningen and spoke with most of the graduating students from the Art Academy about what they’d made, and why. A couple of the artists were unfortunately impossible to find… Some interviews are from before the opening when the show wasn’t yet hung. Interviews: Iben Overgaard. Photos: Laura Stamer and Torben Zenth. Translation: David Duchin.

EXIT 2003
The Royal Danish Art Academy degree show
16 May - 29 June
Kunstforeningen Gammel Strand
Gammel Strand 48 Copenhagen K
Tue-Sun 11-17
www.kunstforeningen.dk

Kristina Ask, AVPD (Aslak Vibæk and Peter Døssing), Thomas Bjørkå, Peter Böttger, Cathrine T. Raben Davidsen, Lene Aagaard Denhart, Karin Enocksson, Simon Grimm, Jeppe Hein, Camilla Holmgren, Maria Hornshøj, Jesper Just, Joachim von Westen Jørgensen, Dror Kasinsky, Eske Kath, Karoline H. Larsen, Søren Lose, Christina Malbek, Inez Mortensen, Espen Brandt-Møller, Camilla Palm, Jens Brink Pedersen, Jakob Rød, Daniel Salomon, Melou Vanggaard, Christian Vind, Ulrik Weck, Maria Werger, Mette Winckelmann.

Kristina Ask

What and why?
My piece is called Re/aktion, and it’s a newspaper installed via the quotes I’ve written on the wall. My project exists outside the institution, in that the newspaper is free and is distributed all over Copenhagen, Odense, Malmø and Aarhus with the Copenhagen Post. The newspaper has a life of its own outside in the public realm, and in this way my project becomes more about the gesture and concept than about the object itself. The newspaper isn’t a piece of art, but it can spark a debate and be issue provoking. The newspaper contains 20 contributions from artists and art theoreticians that write about the things they’re working with at the moment; 20 examples of how art can effect facts in society.
I’m presenting these texts in the context of a Danish art institution in order to point out another definition of a work of art than that which is normally seen here at Kunstforeningen. Lucy Lippard points out that new art practices can take form outside of the art institution and draw upon social energy, for example. I also quote Hal Foster who said that the artist has to have a second role – not as producer of art objects but as someone involved in making marks on time. With this project, the public also are given another role, and they become collaborators because they form opinions about what’s written.

Kristina Ask: Re /aktion

AVPD

AVPD (Aslak Vibæk and Peter Døssing)

What and why?
Our piece is called PolySpatialStructure_VerticalDisplay. The project is about real and virtual spaces. We are super interested in the similarities and differences between virtual and real spaces. How they’re defined, and how we can join them together. The project is in four parts: Maps which is a map of one of the first computer games; Hallways, computer edited images of underground corridors where all signs of human activity have been removed; Diagrams, which describes the field of human – machine – space, virtuality and reality; and finally PolySpatialStructure which is a form of synthetic organic organism that projects a lattice structure onto a surface. In this instance the structure is vertical, but the idea is that it can fan out and create its own organic room.

AVPD: PolySpatialStructure_VerticalDisplay. 2003. Site specific spatial structure and 13 display units in varying size. All displays are lambda-photo, mounted on 10mm surfaces with 10mm acrylic covering them.

Thomas Bjørkå

What and why?
They’re poo-poo coloured porcelain plates, hung on a wall – clay tablets with either XP or PX written on them. They have a lot of references to old tablets and Nordic runes. It’s the mark of a painter and also the mark of old Christian churches – there are many cross-references. The rosette is a clay pigeon, an alternative peace dove, or some form of Holy Ghost.
XP refers to experts – whether they’re us or someone with the sum of our experiences, or what. The tablets refer to something very old, a more mystical place and at the same time to our quick, smart world built up by XP’s.
Even though I’ve built all this in, the work is still very open – but I’d still like to have all the meanings in it. They could mean nothing at all, but by investigating the many layers and systems in the piece, you’ll find that the work is endless in its possibilities for finding meaning.
On the floor are a few relic-like, mysterious objects, but they aren’t completely finished yet.

Thomas Bjørkå: PX.XP. Porcelain, stoneware with paper and clay. Variable size.

More Thomas Bjørkå...
15. maj 2003: The White Gold at Royal Copenhagen
19. december 2002: Pictures from "Co" på Q(Danish)
31. juli 2002: Konglomerat at Trapholt(Danish)

Peter Böttger

What and why?
My piece, which is as yet untitled, is made out of styrofoam plates and strips of moulding. It’s about structure and architecture; about the way things are constructed. It’s a kind of light funnel for the room, affixed to the roof beams. My figure is about ornaments and the patterns that the repeated form makes when it’s put together in new ways. It’s about the exterior and how it relates to the interior as construction and shell, just as one sees in architecture – with the facade and the structural skeleton.
I’ve made my construction with holes, partly so that the funnel can be seen as a surface, and partly to allow sight into the latticework that supports it. My figure will have details so that it can be investigated and all the small imperfections and stories can be found.

Peter Böttger: Sculpture made of styrofoam and moulding, 2003

Cathrine T. Raben Davidsen

What and why?
I have three paintings in Exit that are all inspired by old masterpieces. The princess in A Saxony Girl is a paraphrasal of a work by Cranach the elder. The second piece came from a Velazquez painting and is called His Hour. The last piece, Appropriated Heads, is a family portrait of a French Symbolist whose metier had been to express his own existence in his family.
The reason I work with these paintings is because they’re both beautiful and timeless, and because they contain the same human dimension and basic feelings that we relate to today. At the same time, I explore the craft of painting, using different techniques in non-traditional ways. My work is just as much about form as it is expression of content.

Cathrine T. Raben Davidsen:
His hour. 2003. Oil, spray paint and charcoal on canvass. 200x150 cm.
Appropriated Heads. 2003. Oil, spray paint and charcoal on canvass. 200x300 cm.
A Saxony Girl (after Cranach the elder ). 2003. Oil, spray paint and charcoal on canvass. 200x165 cm.

Lene Aagaard Denhart

Lene Aagaard Denhart:
One and Only. 2003. Photography attached to 10 mm plates
l. 100x100 cm. ll. 100x100 cm
In Between. 2003. Photography attached to 10 mm plates
l. 40x40 cm. ll. 40x40 cm.

Karin Enocksson

What and why?
This piece is called Apollo 2660. It’s two acrylic paintings and two plastic banners painted with magic marker. I’ve been working with exploring the materials and making something with both the transparent and the multi-layered, in order to show that we are connected to the world we live in, and that it is in a process of continual repetition.

Karin Enocksson: Apollo 266O, 2003. Diverse materials.

Simon Grimm

What and why?
My contribution to Exit is a work that combines three elements: a large painting, paper cut outs and ceramics. The title for the whole piece is Fame Jealousy, and it’s about fame and jealousy, which I investigate from different angles.
The paper cut outs are from forms I found in foreign magazines, and painted brown so that they could have a picture postcard character. They’re about the absence of fame, or jealousy of those that have it. The painting has two hands that come down from the top, purpously difficult to make out. There are wires leading to an electric socket under the painting, and some speech balloons. In the background there are tears; pouring down.
My ceramic work is a collage of fragments of speech balloons that are precariously balanced, just about to fall. They’re Søjler af frustration (Columns of Frustration) where small thoughts are hidden away.

Simon Grimm:
Fame Jealousy. 2003. Painting 300x200 cm.
Fame Jealousy. 2003. Paper cut out.
Søjler af frustration (Columns of Frustration). 2003. Ceramic sculpture, height ca. 1665 cm.
Søjler af frustration (Columns of Frustration). 2003. Ceramic sculpture, height ca. 130 cm.
Fame Jealousy. 2003. Ceramic sculpture, height ca. 85 cm.

More Simon Grimm...
2. april 2003: Interview with Simon Grimm(Danish)

Jeppe Hein

What and why?
I decided to show a little bench with smoke: Smoking Bench. When the public sits on the bench they can either look at the other pieces in the show, in this case works by Eske Kath, or they can turn around and look at themselves in the big mirror that’s hung behind them. After about three seconds, smoke starts coming out of the bench. Two seconds later and they’re completely enveloped in a big cloud of smoke. If they look at the mirror, they can see themselves disappear. Ten seconds later and the smoke is gone; the room and the person experiencing it come back into sight.
With this piece I twist both what normally happens when a person sits on a bench and what their relationship is with the art institution itself. When the viewers sit on the bench, they disappear for a moment in a cloud of smoke. It provides them with a moment where they can cast their gaze inward, rather than outward at the exhibition. They get a ‘second of silence’. In the middle of a cloud of smoke, the viewers are cut off from their environment, and they become invisible for the other people at the exhibition. That’s the goal of the piece: to give people the experience of being both the active and the passive observer.

Jeppe Hein: The Smoking Bench,2003. Metal box, smoke machine and mirror. Courtesy Johann König.

More Jeppe Hein...
15. maj 2003: Interview with Jeppe Hein

Camilla Holmgren

What and why?
The piece is called The Space Between 1,2 and 3, and it’s made up of three photographs. It’s primarily a portrait that I’ve focused on. It shows my sister. On the one hand the motif is important, on the other it isn’t. But there is a development in terms of what I’ve worked on with my sister in the past. I haven’t worked with the portrait as a psychological representation, but more as how I ‘stage’ her. The photographs can function as filmic sequences where I’m working with a form of restrained dramatics. I investigate the micromovements of the face and the room she’s placed in.

Camilla Holmgren: The Space Between 1,2,3. 2003. Photography. 40 x 120 cm, 40 x 140 cm, 40 x 81.5 cm.

Maria Hornshøj

Maria Hornhshøj

What and why?
My piece is called Moments # 1 and # 2. They’re wooden frames that I’ve set blue and yellow plexiglass in. I wanted to capture the room, the moment, that exists between the two points. The piece should make the viewer stop and find that little moment that creates the space. The coloured glass changes the space within according to the intensity of the light.

Maria Hornshøj:
Moment#1. 2003. Ash wood and coloured acrylic. 200 x 100 cm
Moment#2. 2003. Ash wood and coloured acrylic. 220 x 120 cm

Jesper Just

Jesper Just: Invitation to Love. 2003. DVD. 7 min. 45 sec.

Joachim von Westen Jørgensen

What and why?
My piece isn’t called anything and it’s made up of various paintings in various sizes; two identical videos of ice crystals that melt under a microscope, and a crow bar moulded in solid silver. There might also be some sound, but that depends on how much sound the other pieces around it are going to have. On a personal level I see the whole thing as a single piece because it’s all about something that interests me. The individual elements can be presented alone, especially the crow bar, but I’ve chosen to present them together.

Why a crow bar in silver?
It’s solid silver in order to play with the very pompous and raw elements. The crow bar in silver is transformed into something refined and valuable. It’s fascinating to know that it’s pure silver. At the same time the crow bar is unusable precisely because it’s made of solid silver, and in that way it’s connected to a long tradition of art that can't be used for anything. It’s a play on the associations you have when you look at a crow bar.

Joachim von Westen Jørgensen 2003. Oil and spray paint on canvass, video, silver.

Dror Kasinsky

Dror Kasinsky: Dontlookback #1, #2, #3, #4. 2003.
#1. Black and white photography. 125 x 159 cm
#2. Black and white photography. 125 x 159 cm
#3. C-print. 125 x 159 cm
#4. Black and white photography. 125 x 159 cm

Eske Kath

What and why?
My painting is called Disintegration. It’s an image inspired by the Baroque doomsday paintings. Especially in the way the universe is split into two parts – a chaos part and a peaceful part – with all the lines dipping down to the bottom centre of the picture. It 's not so much a religious theme I’m working with. I’ve created a stylized natural disaster that in my painting culminates in chaos. I’ve put in small houses being thrown up and down. It’s a new version of the chaos idea; the idea of everything falling apart. The natural disaster symbolises all forms of disaster for the individual. The small houses make it personal, the personal disaster can feel like the whole world is falling apart. At the same time my painting is also a relatively pleasant end of the world. The chaos isn’t total, the suffering isn’t illustrated the way it is in the Baroque; here it’s more stylised, more friendly.
The shelf turns the painting into an object, giving it a material weight. It isn’t just art, it’s also a thing. The shelf is integrated into the image as a parallel to what happens when the Earth’s plates are set in motion. The shelf is both a thematic and physical ground for the painting.

Eske Kath: Disintegration. 2003. Acrylic and collage on canvass, veneer and alcyd. 230 x 360 x 30 cm. Acquired by Dansk Biblioteks Center (Danish Library Centre).
Courtesy Galerie Mikael Andersen.
Eske Kath multiple at kopenhagenshop

More Eske Kath...
26. februar 2003: Interview with Eske Kath(Danish)
26. februar 2003: Eske Kath at Nicolai Wallner(Danish)
26. februar 2003: Rosebud på Christina Wilson(Danish)
10. april 2002: Eske Kath and Johan Nobell - Nye v¾rker(Danish)
Eske Kath mutiple at kopenhagenshop(Danish)

Karoline H. Larsen

What and why?
I’ve created a piece called Manual. It’s a video, 57 minutes and 14 seconds long, which is also for sale in the Kunstforening shop. I’ve recorded 9 different physical therapy exercises in 9 sections of the screen, each 3cmx3cm. There’s a little text in each of the pictures describing the exercise. The idea of the video is that it is an invitation to do the exercises. But it’s also about the cross-reading of sound, image and text, and of body and room.

Karoline H. Larsen: Manual. 2003. DVD. 57 min. 14 sec.

Søren Lose

What and why
I’ve made three photographs; two small and one big. They depict a temple in Rhodos that I photographed last year.
In the fist picture you can see a wall, a crane and a field where there are some column fragments that the crane is in the process of putting together. In the middle of the image is a tourist. In the next picture you can see a more complete temple, supported by some iron girders. It looks a little artificial and stylised with new elements built in to the existing form. The crane is building the form so that it conforms to the idea we have of what our culture is.
The last photo is called Posture and it’s about what people do when they travel as a tourist: photograph themselves in a different scenography. Between the two parts is a blue photo that is the colour of the sky and the sea, but also the colour of photo paper when it’s exposed to the light of day. It’s a before and after picture and the little shift comes with the exposure of the photograph as medium.
One of the points of the work is to present time and place as a construction. To look at the fact that we create a specific understanding of cultural history. These places are for tourists; places that you just have to see when you travel. These ruins used to be seen as an element of the classical education. But this element has changed its character and is now about space and the construction of history.

Søren Lose:
Posture (Lindos). 2003. Light-jet print, mounted on dibond/acrylic. 60 x 180 cm.
Construction Time Again (Crane). 2003. Light-jet print, mounted on dibond/acrylic. 60 x 60 cm.
Construction Time Again (Temple). 2003. mounted on dibond/acrylic.

More Søren Lose...
17. juli 2001: Interveiw med Søren Lose(Danish)

Christina Malbek

Christina Malbek: Ibiza. 2003. Airbrush painting. 195 x 350 cm.

Inez Mortensen

What and why?
I made a horse! The title, My Little Pony, came to me at the end of the process. Originally I’d thought of it as a lithograph, but I wanted it to have more volume. That’s why I’ve had the horse enlarged. Over here I sprayed forms of flowers with a stencil. The flowers create a frame – there’s actually more of them here than I wanted at first. The idea began to create itself, and the result turned out enormously cute. That’s why I used the title My Little Pony, which symbolizes a dream world that is an illusion, a little girl dream. And so this is my vision of My Little Pony, my dream world. Which is paper thin, and not bound to anything but paper bearing the colour of reification and action. It’s flexible and changes just as fast as paper does.

Inez Mortensen: My Little Pony. 2003. Stencil spray on print. 400 x 320 cm

Espen Brandt-Møller

What and why?
I made a group of sculptures called New Ohama and Rest. It’s constructed out of various sculptural elements and the intention was to recreate some coast lines from WWII, the Gulf War and the front surrounding Moscow. The lines give form to a space that becomes the white, unknown spots on a map.
The individual pieces are made of welded plates that are shined up and painted white. It’s a process that can’t be completely controlled. They’re put together with flat plates that are far more precise in their form. The circle is also the signal of many airforces, it’s a very simple signal.
I’ve arranged my sculptures in a way that indicate how various structures can meet, so that new collisions can be created that I can’t control. The space between suggests various coastlines, and it’s possible that I open up the space with them.

Espen Brandt-Møller: New Ohama and Rest, 2003. Iron and paint. Installation/sculpture. Size variable.

Camilla Palm

What and why?
My piece is called Skitser til Exit (Sketches for Exit). I’ve sketched my impressions of Jesper Just’s and Camilla Holmgren’s work, which are exhibited in the same room as mine. I’m attempting to analyse what they would be like if they used a different technique, and I’ve translated that into my sketches. I might have gotten it totally wrong, but it’s my commentary to this kind of exhibition. Many of the artists have worked a long time to produce their pieces, and that’s been difficult for me to relate to. Instead, I relate to the context of this very special situation we’ve been placed in. When the viewer looks at my sketches they might get confused as to who has made what in this room. My method is to take into consideration the time and linear perspectives of the exhibition space.

Camilla Palm: Skitser til EXIT (Sketches for EXIT). 2003. Drawings on white plastic in variable sizes.

Jens Brink Pedersen

What and why?
I’ve been working with photography as a form of expression. The images are from Sydney, from a trip through the city and out to the coast. There are 6 black and white photographs created following a tradition from photographic history that started 20 years ago.

Jens Brink Pedersen: Sydney. 2003. Photography. 50 x60 cm.

Jakob Rød

What and why?
I’ve made a 4 minute video called House / Girl / Water. It’s recordings from a trip down the American west coast. Half of it is a re-telling of my experiences of various motel atmospheres. Half is fiction. What I’ve concentrated on is the way I edited the images and sound. I’m also showing some stills from the video.

Jakob Rød:
House/Girl/Water. 2003. DVD. 4 min. 9 sec.
House/Girl/Water. 2003. Video stills, 40 x 50 cm

Daniel Salomon

What and why?
The first piece is called Sound Affects. It’s a jukebox with about 600 sounds recorded in the spaces I’ve spent my time in over the course of the last month. They’re divided up into categories like restaurant, bar and club. On the 2nd and 3rd floor of the exhibition space I’ve set up two video installations with two people talking. The scene on the 2nd floor is from Bangkok with a girl at a flea market. On the 3rd floor it’s a guy from Thailand walking around in Copenhagen’s main train station. The two of them are talking together in Thai.
The jukebox is about taking a foreign element into a museum, and exhibiting the space that the element brings with it. They are sounds from my private life that I’m making accessible to the public. It’s important to me that the titles of the work are very general, with no names. I’ve worked with sound effect records to make background noise. This time I've made my own sounds as an interaction between my work and the rest of the exhibition. The basis of my work is taking the private space into the public room. I wanted to exhibit sound instead of image in order to accent the difference. Sound allows the public to create an inner space which is different for each visitor to the exhibition. Video, on the other hand, is more of a complete impression.

Daniel Salomon:
Sound affects. 2003. Jukebox
Uden titel, del 1 (no title, part 1). 2003. Video installation. 1 min. 15 sec.
Uden titel, del 2 (no title, part 2). 2003. Video installation. 1 min. 15 sec.

Melou Vanggaard

What and why?
I’ve called my section Anatomie eines Malereiinstallation. It’s a kind of painting installation. I’ve made a series of expressive paintings with themes taken from the city space and its energy. I’ve used a lot of different traditional techniques. For me personally, the work is self-reflective, but for the public it’s both decorative and full of reference to the other – to the places that the various elements come from. The decorative flowers on one of the pieces actually come from political posters from Poland in the 1960s.
I’ve also worked with the rhythmic, which is demonstrated in the photo of myself as a DJ in a gallery in L.A. The motif is something I had made in Thailand. The rhythmic element is in the way they’re hung and in the surface. Placing the pieces together like this portrays my work as objects in transit. There are many layers – here in the way they’re arranged, in the works themselves where I’ve worked with collage, and in the titles.

Melou Vanggaard: Anatomie eines Malereiinstallation. 2003. Acrylic, oil and alcyd on canvas, lithography, print and drawing. Various sizes.

More Melou Vanggaard...
28. feb. 2002: Melou Vanggaard at Kunstakademiets Udstillingssted(Danish)
19. okt. 2000: Interview with Melou Vanggaard(Danish)
Melou Vanggaard multiple at kopenhagenshop(Danish)

Christian Vind

What and why?
What I’m exhibiting is partly what’s hung on the wall, and partly what I’ve got in this project file and these books. On the wall I’ve got photography, lithography and a painting. The first one is called Skygge (Shadow), the next is a lithograph called Across the Ocean, after that is a large painting called Old European Painting, and the next is Vindue med bøger i silhuet (Window with Books in Silhouette), and the last one is called Night Rises From the Sea. The pieces on the wall are all related to each other, and to the box of books via the forms and objects that repeat themselves from work to work.
I like drawings – the painting and lithography are both drawn and that’s the medium I primarily work with. All the pictures begin and end with a line, everything is definitive in a drawing, it’s a ‘one hitter’. With painting you’ve always got the possibility of expanding on what you’ve done, layer upon layer. Drawing is more straight forward and direct, and I like that. I drew out my painting by putting the canvass on the floor and sitting on it, using the brush as a pencil. It’s a simple way to get around all the problems with painting.

Christian Vind:
Night Rises from the Sea. 2002. Lithograph. 95.5 x 71.5 cm.
Vindue med bøger i silhuet (Window with Books in Silhouette). 2000-03. Photograph. 124 x 89 cm.
Old European Painting. 2002. Ink on canvass. 200 x 150 cm.
Across the Ocean. 2002. Lithography. 95.5 x 71.5 cm.
Skygge (Shadow). 2000-03. Photograph. 124 x 89 cm.

More Christian Vind...
31. marts 2002: Christian Vind at Herluf Trolles Gade(Danish)
Christian Vind multiple at kopenhagenshop(Danish)
Christian Vind publikation at kopenhagenshop(Danish)

Ulrik Weck

What and why?
I’m showing three independent videos: The Day Sherry Ran Away; The Hairdresser; and Guardian Angel – I like the last one the most.
All the videos are recorded in an ‘observatory mode’, which is me walking around on the street and filming. I didn’t have a goal with them other than finding interesting things. All the videos investigate what is involved in telling a good story. They’re small sketches that last about a minute each – all reduced down to the most important elements. They’re just long enough so that you can become personally involved in the story and the way it’s told. I’m most interested in people and the small, precious stories that can come out of nothing.

Ulrik Weck:
Guardian Angel. 2003. DVD. 1 min. 37. sec.
The Day Sherry Ran Away. 2002. DVD. 1 min. 45 sec.
The Hairdresser. 2002. DVD. 1 min.

Maria Werger

What and why?
My work is called En Højtidelig Morgen (A Solemn Morning). It’s an installation with a bunch of figures made of cardboard on a large table. They represent different people in different situations, combined in different ritual formations.

Maria Werger: En Højtidelig Morgen (A Solemn Morning). 2003. Installation.

Mette Winckelmann

Mette Winkelmann

Mette Winckelmann: Queer Situation. 2003-05-19 Acrylic on canvass. 240 x 120 cm. Object on fabric. 300 x 350 cm. Courtesy Galleri Christina Wilson.

More Mette Winkelmann...
26. februar 2003: Rosebud på Christina Wilson(Danish)
26. september 2002 : Dunk - Interview med Mette Winckelmann(Danish)