Collaged Utopias, Globalized Worlds:
Deutsche Bank
Art presents Ursula Döbereiner and Kirstine Roepstorff at the Frieze Art
Fair
Deutsche Bank Art’s press
stand at the Frieze Art Fair in London is celebrating a premiere. Not only
has the Danish artist Kirstine Roepstorff, one of the newcomers on the
young Scandinavian scene, designed a limited edition for the occasion; her
set comprised of a shopping bag, sticker, and poster promises to become a
collector’s item. For the first time this year, the entire stand has been
designed by a single artist: “Spaces into Spaces” is the title of the
installation by the Berlin-based artist Ursula Döbereiner, which surrounds
the visitor like a gigantic all-round drawing. db-artmag introduces the
artists and their works.
|
Kirstine Roepstorff, The Third Way,
2005 © Kirstine Roepstorff, Courtesy Peres Projects, Los
Angeles/Berlin, Christina Wilson Gallery, Kopenhagen
|
|
Kirstine Roepstorff, This is not the
Queen of Diamonds, She just wants it, 2004 Courtesy Christina Wilson
Gallery
|
"I think photomontages function like dreams," says
Kirstine Roepstorff. "It’s impossible to dream of something you have no
picture of, of something that hasn’t been reproduced by our visual
culture." Indeed, the collages of the artist, who divides her time between
Berlin and Copenhagen, evoke an odd state of suspension. In The Third
Way (2005), the work that makes up the poster motif for
Deutsche Bank Art, a 19th-century schooner sails through a turquoise-blue
sea leaving a foamy mist of paper shreds and glittery particles in its
trail, innumerable specks of color and light.
Kirstine Roepstorff, Eel of unfortune (trust me), 2005,
Courtesy Christina Wilson Gallery
|
|
Kirstine Roepstorff, Parlament (Stop
woman), 2005, Courtesy Christina Wilson Gallery
|
|
Kirstine Roepstorff, Hearts with
Seeds and Brains with Love, 2004, Courtesy Christina Wilson Gallery
|
An ivory-colored tower of cups and pots is piled up on the
horizon. A closer look reveals two amateur golf players behaving like
elephants in a chinaware store, threatening to turn the luxurious vision
to shards. In Roepstorff’s work, the classical image of the immigrant from
Old Europe who embarked on the journey to the promised land on the other
side of the Atlantic towards the end of the previous century meets its
contemporary equivalent. The romantic yearning for a freer life is reduced
to utopian visions that resemble the consumerist dreams of a
Habitat catalogue.
The Third Way belongs to a series of
collages that Roepstorff made in 2005 for her installation Mystic
Harbour in the group exhibition
Critical Societies shown at the
Badischer Kunstverein. During the same time, her works were part of the
international event project
Populism, which investigated the relationship between contemporary art
and current political and populist tendencies and was shown in various
exhibition venues such as the
Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the
Frankfurter Kunstverein. Capitalism as a safe harbor? Both exhibitions
posed the question as to how artistic production can be combined with a
criticism of capitalism. Roepstorff’s works examine whether and how
current artistic production can aesthetically comprehend and reflect upon
alternative political utopias.
The principles of montage assume a
key role in the work of the 1972-born Danish artist. Works like Pink
or Hearts with Seeds and Brains with Love, both of which are from
2004 and serve as motifs for the paper bag editions of Deutsche Bank Art,
are reminiscent of Dadaist collages and the agitative works of
John Heartfield. At the same time, they refer to the aesthetic strategies
of women artists such as
Hannah Höch or
Martha Rosler:
Kirstine Roepstorff, Pink, 2004,
Courtesy Christina Wilson Gallery
the
photomontage appears as a medium for a feminist point of view that
illuminates collective consciousness. Roepstorff, however, blurs the
borders between the political message and "Radical-Chic": images of war
zones, global migration, and ecological catastrophes merge with pictures
taken from lifestyle and design magazines. In her collages, clouds of
colorful confetti explode; it’s raining diamonds and glitter, and the
result is both glamorous and paradoxical. Roepstorff’s works are
aesthetically refined; they possess an almost oppressive beauty. While
they reveal political and social transgressions in a highly subtle manner,
they unmask the all-encompassing language of the world of commodities and
advertising as cynical and superficial.
[1]
[2]
|
