Kirstine Roepstorff (DK) and Kirsten Pieroth (D) 

Press photos

 

January 20. - February 10. 2001

 

Sparwasser HQ is pleased to begin the new year with an exhibition of works by artists Kirstine Roepstorff (1972) and Kirsten Pieroth (1970). Each artist presents two new pieces, incorporating materials as diverse as water and yarn, and employing media ranging from photography to silkscreen printing. Through their work with everyday objects and words, Roepstorff and Pieroth explore the transformation of materials and the meanings attached to them.

In her works, Pieroth destabilizes the origin of an object by changing its use and adding to it, physically, other functions. She alters the perception of the object and the associations to it in order to make room for new inscriptions of value.

"Kreuzberger Pfütze" is the title of a piece by Pieroth exhibited in the basement of Sparwasser HQ. Pfütze" means puddle; Sparwasser means "spared water." The title describes the project: Pieroth has moved a puddle from Kreuzberg to Sparwasser HQ, thereby removing the puddle from its original spatial context. The transferred puddle is, in its fluidity, a signifier of endless reshaping.

"Kreuzberger Pfütze" resembles a scientific experiment. This scientific approach is characteristic also of Pieroth's second work, "Reaktion von grauen Tauben auf graue Socken während der Fütterung (Humboldthain)" ("Gray pigeons reacting to gray socks while being fed (Humboldthain)"), a series of seven photographs documenting a situation created by the artist in Humboldthain Park, Berlin. Pieroth placed fourteen pairs of worn-out, gray socks among the food for the pigeons and observed how the birds approached and reacted to these strange new elements in their environment.

For Roepstorff, the transformation of meaning is inherent in the physical manifestations of her works. Using straightforward materials such as yarn, pushpins, and silkscreen prints, she creates works that appear fragile at first glance.

Roepstorff's installation is a fine, white representation of symmetrical window frames, displayed in a hermetically sealed room of the gallery. With yarn, Roepstorff draws an illusionary room, in 1:1 scale, an alternative to existing space. The illusion almost disappears; the white yarn dissolves permanent, physical form, suggesting alternatives for shaping our environments.

A critique of the human desire to organize and map reality is voiced also in "Out of the Blue," a series of 25 delicate silkscreen prints depicting chains of words. In each print, the meaning of the first word is transformed gradually, through a series of synonyms, ending in its opposition - e.g. from hate to love, from desire to disgust. Blue text printed on white surfaces, the result is a fragile and unstable picture, because the words are barely visible in their different shades. Underneath the delicate surface, however, an insistence on the honest and simple circumstances of human experience is discernable, the words become a naive mapping of the register of feelings at our disposal.

Text: Henrikke Nielsen, Solvej Helweg Ovesen.