ITS CLAY - New talents.. March-April 2015

CLICK photo = LARGE format + slide show.. Photos of exhibition and previous work..

ITS CLAY – young talents from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art
Exhibition 26 March – 30 April 2015
Artist talk on Saturday 18 April at 16-17.30
Material matters – matter materials..? - Young contemporary ceramic art
The gallery exhibits the Art Academy's young talents – who work in clay.
From a relatively short career, they are working with a wide range of philosophical and artistic ideas, but come of the same place, time and education. Previous work:

They are all recent graduates, recommended for this exhibition by Karen Harsbo, associate professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.
The exhibitors have used the ceramic materials - in their ways.
Sophus Ejler Jepsen archives narratives, Christian Mastrup/Flopper works technically with object, installation and sound, Morten Modin analyses material, Ulla Bech-Bruun materializes the psyche, Sofie Hertz shows ceramics and photos of infinity and incompatibilities, Anne Mette Schultz' work title is Foot, and Sif Itona Westerberg combines casting, collage and photo.
The exhibition shows, by virtue of the Fine Arts' traditionally liberal approach to material, new angles of contemporary ceramics and highlights visual arts in relation to materials.
- Is this question interesting - or will the work speak its own cause..?
- We have to look more closely..
One thing is certain – each piece gives its own record of the time we live in.

THE EXHIBITORS
Sophus Ejler Jepsen - www.sophusejlerjepsen.dk
- object/installation – archive of object connections - design elements
Along Dotted Lines is a series of porcelain bowls for the child's morning compleit.
Along the dotted line the child follows an Around the World Sailing in an atlas, Marco Polo's caravan to Mongolia, fox tracks in the snow, the treasure hunt for a birthday or the bending lines in the folding instructions to a newspaper hat.
MentoR attempts by his instructions and examples to guide the child, Telemachus.
The instructions begin in the morning as stories in the bottom of a plate.
Marco Polo's caravan to Mongolia, fox tracks in the snow, the treasure hunt for a birthday or the bending lines in...
Along the dotted lines MentoR has folded the forms for the breakfast's bowls and along the dotted lines indicated the locations and names that bind the stories to the World.
Along the dotted lines I will return to the simple and easy grip of the folded paper moulds for my porcelain début at The White Gold in 2003, and couple it with the brush strokes' botany of my autumn's Chamisso-tale at the Copenhagen Ceramics in the fall of 2014 and 3D printing opportunities for Hyphae and Sporer pieces on the All_Cph 2013."
”Texts on previous exhibitions: - Tanton is a romantic drama based on Adelbert von Chamisso amazing life and work; written and sketched forward in a ceramic scale of plaster, cement and porcelain glaze - Copenhagen Ceramics 2014.
- Porcelain in a box as well as a multitude of studies concerning casting of porcelain in cardboard, boxes and paper moulds, with subsequent decoration in blue under-glaze, which selects and indicates signs and traces of folding from the casting and firing processes. Poster-bag-inventory-flyer The White Gold, Royal Copenhagen 2003.”
Sophus Ejler Jepsen (b.1971) lives and works in Askov by Vejen.
EDUCATION Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen MFA 2005
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS 'Over The Moat' Sønderskov Castle, 'Not at Home' Brænderigården Viborg and Ringsted Gallery 2015 - 'Miles away & Tanton' Copenhagen Ceramics, 'Regional Concrete' Kongeåen/ Vejen Art Museum and Aarhus Art Building 2014 - 'Sculpturepress.org' John & Olivia Museum Holstebro, 'Forest Someone' Alt_Cph and 'With clay as a hostage' Vestjyllands Kunstpavillon 2013 - Frontier Lands Exhibition Aabenraa 2013,14 - 'Shadow and Mirror' Vejen Art Museum in 2011..


Christian Mastrup - alias Flopper
- Technique concept installation object sound..
"My inspiration - background and references?
- It is difficult to answer to specifically..
- Long walks in nature, technique, machinery, infrastructure, underground (understood both as
subculture and the urban space under the city), reference books and general curiosity, robots, the world's impending collapse - man's innate stupidity around the same – and sound, broadly spoken."
Christian Mastrup/Flopper (b.1974) lives/works in Copenhagen.
EDUCATION - NORDIC SOUND ART Joint Study Program, Scandinavia MA 2010-12, Art Academy BA/MFA 2006-12
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS & SOUND WORKS WET SOUNDS, SPOR Festival Aarhus, RAINFOREST IV Singuhr Sound gallery Berlin, LIVE IMPROVISATION at the Finnish radio show SILAKKA (w. E.Øyen Vister and J.Olesen) 2011 - HOUHOT Inner Mongolia, FISH IN BLOB 'An Idea of Japan' Japanese Embassy DK and HER LADES ALT HÅB UDE (site specific installation) Furesø DK 2009 - ACOUSTIC FUN FARE (sound) Roskilde, PHONE GRID INSTALLATION (dance) Cultural Market Days Copenhagen, ELLA (sound) Copenhagen Cultural Night 2008..
HALF-MACHINE annual festival/interactive art & machines (inventor/concept developer) Copenhagen 2003-08 - PHONE GRID AND SOUND INSTALLATION 7 tales of misery 2006 & Black Rose Trick (by S.Sørensen) 2005,04..
BYEN BRÆNDER (The City Burns) street art festival (inventor/concept developer/co-organizer) Copenhagen 2002 - NORMAL FREAKS performance/sound installation/poetry/music ensemble - various venues Copenhagen 1999–2008.. www.normalfreaks.dk


Ulla Bech-Bruun - www.ullabech-bruun.dk
- Installation/object/mix-media.. psychological, poetic
"A forearm prosthesis for attachment on top of a fully functional body part - does not end in a hand, but in a lion's paw ..
A prosthesis in porcelain for a 'fully' body inhibits the body's motion rather than facilitate it - Incomplete the normal rather than normalizing the incomplete. But does this incompleteness add to a mythological strength that makes it a powerful extension - an arm version 2:0..?
In this work I develop the piece's direct relation to the body, as I began investigating in my last work; a plate armour in porcelain and combining this study with animal form that has haunted my earliest pieces.
The prosthesis will take it one step further and examine what happens when you introduce a limiting extension/alteration of the body's physical form rather than/an addition to a protection.
The works are interesting because of their unheimlichkeit - they are at the same time familiar and alien, appealing and repulsive.
This may be due to the clash between their careful execution, pointing to significant time consumption and care, and their alien-and-yet familiar content. Affectionately disrepair, one might say.
I am a trained and practising psychologist and greatly concerned with the widespread - and in my eyes - wrong division between body and mind. I try in my works to embody the mind and 'mind-like' body. My inspiration includes Louise Bourgeois, David Lynch, the Frankenstein myth, Kant .. "
EDUCATION Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts MFA 2012 - cand psych, Copenhagen University 2006.
EXHIBITIONS 'Zimmer Frei' group Koldinghus, 'FormLanguage-MindPlay' Ann Linnemann Gallery 2014 - 'Trusted Doubt' Vejen Art Museum, 'SKI N w. Mikkel S.Andersen BKS Garage Copenhagen, 'Landscape / Mind' group w. Francois Top and Timo Andersen NEXUS Aabenraa 2013 - 'Pupae' solo & collaboration w. Copenhagen Philharmonics Radio Concert Hall 2012, 'Exam 2012' Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Nikolaj Church Gallery - 'Konstance Luns Cabinet' solo Gallery Q 2011 - "Images Between Man 'group Rohde Contemporary GB 2010 ..


Morten Modin - www.mortenmodin.com
- Material investigation - installation/object ..
"My working title is TUBE - Tubes roughly modeled in different scales, - stands probably in a small mount.
The tubes are subsequently reworked in different ways. Some have got glass, some (probably) feathers and one chromed.. - In various kinds of clays."
Morten Modin (b.1981) lives and works in Copenhagen, DK
EDUCATION Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts w. Professor Martin Erik Andersen MFA 2014 BFA 2011 - Helsinki Art Akademy, KUVA, FI 2007
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS 'Generator' Kunsthal Nord, Aalborg (w. Poul Bækhøj) 2015 - 'Imago Mundi' Luciano Benetton Collection, INT 2015 - British Ceramic Biennial 2014, Stoke-On-Trent, GB 2013 - 'Undercurrent' ARoS 2014 - MFA show 'Exam' Charlottenborg, Copenhagen 2014 - 'Trusted doubt' Vejen Museum, DK 2013 - commission concrete sculptures Vejen Municipality 2014 - solo 'Outcome reaches own frequency..' BKS-Garage, Copenhagen 2013 - censored 'Portrait Now' Fredensborg Palace 2011 - Spring Exhibition 2010..


Sofie Hertz - www.sofiehertz.dk
- Sculpture / object / photo - body, functional parts..
"My overall project is to understand the object as an infinity. A timely job, therapeutic, sometimes erotic. - With wellness and the body as a unit. From where everything comes, I move completely into and completely away from. The observer does the same.
"From pictures of, or details from - foot massagers, I design objects; forms, which I touch up, brush, clean up, and they become smooth and shiny, and I photograph them, so that the clay rawness and glossiness, make the light catch in the material - and I print them out on photographic paper, and the object and image unite again, into something that becomes an installation or sculpture.
- The feel of a material which penetrates through the other. Translations, layers and crafts, inside the piece, which is moving away from the physical original, and where one(another) sensuous expression emerges.
To understand an object is a temporal work, therapeutic, erotic.
Time and work, object and archeology, therapy, body and needs lie in and around the pieces, but as much appears the direct experience and tangible feeling in the outcome."
Sofie Hertz (b. 1982) lives and works in Copenhagen.
EDUCATION Royal Danish Academy of Arts, Copenhagen 2007-14, Art School Spectrum 2005, Bjørn Icnatius Øckenholts Frederiksberg Visual Art School 2004 - Holbæk Art School 2002.
EXHIBITIONS solo Danish graphic artists, 'Fossils4Desires' 2014 - group Gallery Q, 'The Open Source Way' and Charlottenborg 'Graduate Show' 2014 Art Herning/SAK, Galerie Pi 2013/14 - Photographic Centre, 'Victor A Judge' Ballerup 'Center in Art, Art in the Center' 2013 - Art Forum, Galerie Pi 2012 – Gallery Q 'Pocket Eruption 'and BKS Garage 'Keystone', commission project Center for Renhold Hauser Plads 2011 – 'Skulpturi - instead of the place' 2008 – Autumn Exhibition KE 2006..


Anne Mette Schultz
My work title is FOOT.
- The foot is roughly modelled and glazed as if the glaze is a colour palette.
I have used red clay and red earthenware glaze.
Anne Mette Schultz (b. 1983)
EDUCATION Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (MFA) 2008-14
EXHIBITIONS - 'We take no responsibility' Gallery Q Copenhagen and 'The musicians paint, Painters make music and Poets shut up' Overgaden, Institute of Contemporary Art in 2014 – 'Graduates 2014' Charlottenborg - 'Trusted doubt' Vejen Art Museum, 'Natural Power' Paul La Cour Museum, Askov and Art in the center/Center in art' Ballerup Centre 2013 - 'Textile Interventions' Paul La Cour Museum, Askov 2013 - IPE, BKS Garage Copenhagen 2012 - 'Skulpturi' students from the Academy of Arts and 'The Round: the questioned institution' 2011 .. Fine Artist Award Bikuben Arts Program, Copenhagen 2014/15.


Sif Itona Westerberg - www.sifitona.blogspot.dk
- Sculptural - mainly casts, collage, photography

"Modern collective identification space, in the view of planetary challenges we are experiencing today. The anthropogenic footprint on the planet has become so widespread, that today we may regard humans as an natural transforming power in itself, on an equal footing with the planet's natural processes. Through tactile and tangible negotiations, I examine and explore the new positions, relationships and understanding this cosmological paradigm shift may bring.
My contribution to the exhibition is a work of collage where I merge PlexiGlass, porcelain and manipulated photos.
Recently published by a team of American researchers the largest virtual model of the universe, more than 41,000 galaxies are plotted, forming a network of computer generated dots on the screen.
When we, human ponder about the universe, we are often concerned with space and time perception that is far beyond the scale we are mentally capable to navigate in. By using modern technologies our comprehension space is now nearer to us , but what kind of understanding do we get, as long as it is mediated through a computer and not physically experienced?
Alongside that we will be able to make the big zoom out onto the universe, we also get the lens in at ourselves and our bodies, and are now able to identify and manipulate fully inside the core of most cells we hold.
And precisely in this zoom, I have chosen to draw juxtapositions between the outer and the inner, the intangibility that characterizes the smallest and the very largest."
Sif Itona Westerberg (b. 1985) graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts 2014.
She lives and works in Copenhagen.
EXHIBITIONS 'Wax, Flax, and Feathers' w. David Stjernholm & Morten Stræde, 68 Square Meters 2014 - 'Seepage through saturated porous media' Westwerk (HH) 2014 – 'Graduates 2014' Charlottenborg Art Foundation 2014 - 'New Young Art' Martin Asbæk Gallery 2014 - 'Works from the Art Academy' Farum Cultural Centre 2014 - 'Trusted doubt' Vejen Art Museum 2013 - 'Remains of Eternity' solo OK Corral 2013 - 'Deputies' w. Asbjorn Skou MOHS Exhibit 2012 -' Dream Lover' group C4 2011 -' The U in us if 4 Utopia 'Fifth Floor (CPH) Torben Zenth Project Space 2011..




Grateful thanks to Denmark's National Banks Foundation for the 2015 Grant.