Ebbe Stub Wittrup
16 May - 14 Sep 2014
EBBE STUB WITTRUP
The Third Room
16 May - 14 September 2014
Are you superstitious? For thousands of years we humans have felt drawn to inexplicable phenomena and legendary tales, whether from literature or linked to specific places, cultures and religions. For the last ten years the artist Ebbe Stub Wittrup (b. 1973) has worked with superstition and the creation of myths, optical illusions and tricks of the mind in his art. Taking inspiration from psychology, theosophy, gestalt and colour theory, he challenges and disturbs our logical and rational interaction with the world.
In his work Ebbe Stub Wittrup combines various scientific theories, historical and literary references with our perception and idea of the supernatural. His works are often connected to actual places shrouded in mystery and with possible roots in stories from the real life. They usually imply an additional layer of meaning – a kind of third room – linked to the unknown.
A WONDERFUL JOURNEY
The exhibition Ebbe Stub Wittrup – THE THIRD ROOM will be the artist’s most important solo show yet. It includes a broad spectrum of works – film, slide, sculpture and photography – from earlier as well as brand new series of work.
From surrealist André Breton’s hotel room in Paris via mysterious Devil’s Bridges in Southern Europe to an enigmatic island in Northern Scotland, the exhibition takes us on a strange and wonderful journey where real and unreal phenomena meet. The film series Mary Rose – A Play in Three Acts (2011) shows Wittrup’s interpretation of the horror story of Mary Rose, a girl who under mysterious circumstances is sucked into a parallel world, initially for 21 days, then for several decades, after which she returns with no recollection of where she has been and showing no visible signs of aging.
In the photographic series Eight Cards (2011) Wittrup’s point of departure is psychoanalyst Max Lüscher’s colour test, a much used psychological method from the 1970s.
The colour test employed eight colour cards, which the patient was asked to stack randomly on the table, enabling the psychologist to decode the mental state of the patient according to the (sub-consciously) chosen order. In Eight Cards the artist has transformed the various psychological moods represented in the card stacks into beautiful digital colour portraits. The coloured cards are also part of the silent movie House of Cards (2013), showing the collapsed card house slowly reassembling.
THEATRICAL MISE-EN-SCÈNE
Ebbe Stub Wittrup – THE THIRD ROOM will be staged in a theatrical and atmospheric mode with strong lighting and corridors of curtains to pass through, to get from one room to the next. The curtains will function as metaphorical passages into a new and unknown place – a third room – between myth and reality, the visible and the invisible.
The exhibition is curated by Maria Kappel Blegvad. And sponsored by KVADRAT and Statens Kunstfond.
The Third Room
16 May - 14 September 2014
Are you superstitious? For thousands of years we humans have felt drawn to inexplicable phenomena and legendary tales, whether from literature or linked to specific places, cultures and religions. For the last ten years the artist Ebbe Stub Wittrup (b. 1973) has worked with superstition and the creation of myths, optical illusions and tricks of the mind in his art. Taking inspiration from psychology, theosophy, gestalt and colour theory, he challenges and disturbs our logical and rational interaction with the world.
In his work Ebbe Stub Wittrup combines various scientific theories, historical and literary references with our perception and idea of the supernatural. His works are often connected to actual places shrouded in mystery and with possible roots in stories from the real life. They usually imply an additional layer of meaning – a kind of third room – linked to the unknown.
A WONDERFUL JOURNEY
The exhibition Ebbe Stub Wittrup – THE THIRD ROOM will be the artist’s most important solo show yet. It includes a broad spectrum of works – film, slide, sculpture and photography – from earlier as well as brand new series of work.
From surrealist André Breton’s hotel room in Paris via mysterious Devil’s Bridges in Southern Europe to an enigmatic island in Northern Scotland, the exhibition takes us on a strange and wonderful journey where real and unreal phenomena meet. The film series Mary Rose – A Play in Three Acts (2011) shows Wittrup’s interpretation of the horror story of Mary Rose, a girl who under mysterious circumstances is sucked into a parallel world, initially for 21 days, then for several decades, after which she returns with no recollection of where she has been and showing no visible signs of aging.
In the photographic series Eight Cards (2011) Wittrup’s point of departure is psychoanalyst Max Lüscher’s colour test, a much used psychological method from the 1970s.
The colour test employed eight colour cards, which the patient was asked to stack randomly on the table, enabling the psychologist to decode the mental state of the patient according to the (sub-consciously) chosen order. In Eight Cards the artist has transformed the various psychological moods represented in the card stacks into beautiful digital colour portraits. The coloured cards are also part of the silent movie House of Cards (2013), showing the collapsed card house slowly reassembling.
THEATRICAL MISE-EN-SCÈNE
Ebbe Stub Wittrup – THE THIRD ROOM will be staged in a theatrical and atmospheric mode with strong lighting and corridors of curtains to pass through, to get from one room to the next. The curtains will function as metaphorical passages into a new and unknown place – a third room – between myth and reality, the visible and the invisible.
The exhibition is curated by Maria Kappel Blegvad. And sponsored by KVADRAT and Statens Kunstfond.