Marie Lund: Flush
30 Jan - 06 Apr 2015
Press Information Marie Lund at Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe 2015
Marie Lund, Torso, 2014, Detail, Courtesy Laura Bartlett Gallery, London und Croy Nielsen, Berlin
Flush is the Danish artist Marie Lund’s first institutional solo exhibition in Germany. The exhibition focuses on a new series of sculptures, Torso (2014-2015), which is complemented by other recent works.
Lund’s practice is a genuinely sculptural one, although her works clearly undermine the classic notions of sculptural form and materiality. Lund is more interested in the transformation of the material, how it emerges through artistic intervention or becomes evident in the objects themselves through years of use. A permanent process of taking form and giving form is what characterizes Lund’s approach.
The Casts (2014), newly created for this exhibition, undergo the transformation from the figurative to the abstract. In this work Lund casts the back sides and hollow interiors of the plaster figures from the Royal Danish Cast Collection in blue wax. This results in abstract forms, where the figurative characteristics of the sculptures – like noses, eyes, and mouths – can still be faintly recognized on the surfaces. They also show traces of the original working process – the modeling of the sculptures from the inside.
The artist concentrates on the surface of an object, which communicates between the interior and the exterior like a delicate membrane. The canvases in Stills (2014) are used curtains, the artist found during a visit in Arizona. The colour has faded irregularly due to years of the strong desert sunlight shining upon the draped fabric. What remains is the replica of an object, the use of which has been burned into the material like an over-exposed photograph. In the central work Torso, Lund consistently continues her interest in the relation of volume and surface by combining soft imprints of fabrics with the hard materiality of the concrete cast. Sweaters are placed directly in the mould and removed again after the concrete has set, whereby traces of the material still adhere to the concrete. They are sculptures in their own right and at the same time serve as pedestals for smaller objects in the exhibition. The objects in Hand Full (2014) are bronze casts of the insides of the artist’s pockets and they articulate the experience of holding and being held. A similar process of transforming void into matter is present in the series Loads (2014) casting the inner form of backpacks.
Playing with these presumed discrepancies between material and form, body and surface, figuration and abstraction is paradigmatic for Lund’s complex concept of sculpture.
Curated by Anja Casser
Marie Lund (b. 1976 in Copenhagen) lives and works in London. Her latest solo exhibitions include Dip, Laura Bartlett Gallery, London, Statements, Art Basel, Drums, Museo Marino Marini, Florence, Back Pack, Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City, and Clickety Click, Croy Nielsen, Berlin. Her works have also been featured in exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Krefeld, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Sorø Kunstmuseum, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Kunsthalle Mulhouse, De Vleeshal, Middelburg, Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, Nomas Foundation, Rome, David Roberts Foundation, London, Kunstverein Braunschweig, The Swiss Institute, New York, and CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco.
Lund’s practice is a genuinely sculptural one, although her works clearly undermine the classic notions of sculptural form and materiality. Lund is more interested in the transformation of the material, how it emerges through artistic intervention or becomes evident in the objects themselves through years of use. A permanent process of taking form and giving form is what characterizes Lund’s approach.
The Casts (2014), newly created for this exhibition, undergo the transformation from the figurative to the abstract. In this work Lund casts the back sides and hollow interiors of the plaster figures from the Royal Danish Cast Collection in blue wax. This results in abstract forms, where the figurative characteristics of the sculptures – like noses, eyes, and mouths – can still be faintly recognized on the surfaces. They also show traces of the original working process – the modeling of the sculptures from the inside.
The artist concentrates on the surface of an object, which communicates between the interior and the exterior like a delicate membrane. The canvases in Stills (2014) are used curtains, the artist found during a visit in Arizona. The colour has faded irregularly due to years of the strong desert sunlight shining upon the draped fabric. What remains is the replica of an object, the use of which has been burned into the material like an over-exposed photograph. In the central work Torso, Lund consistently continues her interest in the relation of volume and surface by combining soft imprints of fabrics with the hard materiality of the concrete cast. Sweaters are placed directly in the mould and removed again after the concrete has set, whereby traces of the material still adhere to the concrete. They are sculptures in their own right and at the same time serve as pedestals for smaller objects in the exhibition. The objects in Hand Full (2014) are bronze casts of the insides of the artist’s pockets and they articulate the experience of holding and being held. A similar process of transforming void into matter is present in the series Loads (2014) casting the inner form of backpacks.
Playing with these presumed discrepancies between material and form, body and surface, figuration and abstraction is paradigmatic for Lund’s complex concept of sculpture.
Curated by Anja Casser
Marie Lund (b. 1976 in Copenhagen) lives and works in London. Her latest solo exhibitions include Dip, Laura Bartlett Gallery, London, Statements, Art Basel, Drums, Museo Marino Marini, Florence, Back Pack, Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City, and Clickety Click, Croy Nielsen, Berlin. Her works have also been featured in exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Krefeld, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Sorø Kunstmuseum, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Kunsthalle Mulhouse, De Vleeshal, Middelburg, Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, Nomas Foundation, Rome, David Roberts Foundation, London, Kunstverein Braunschweig, The Swiss Institute, New York, and CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco.