ART CITIES:Copenhagen-Tove Storch
Tove Storch’s artistic projects can be viewed as a continuous investigation of sculptural possibilities. Her works challenges the viewer’s perception of space and reality and ask questions to what sculpture is and what it’s able to do. In a combination of a tight minimal expression and delicate, fragile materials her works give physical shape to complex reflections on form, time and space.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Nils Stærk Gallery Archive
Tove Storch’s solo exhibition title “Apple Romance” is taken from a text which forms part of the exhibition and is written by the freelance curator and writer Paola Paleari. Encircled by Paola Paleari’s words, five sculptures fill the gallery space in close mutual dialogue. A striking common feature of the works is metal structures clearly bolted together, all of them supporting either heavy plaster or gossamer silk. The interplay of the materials, appearing almost erotic, dissolves the anticipated hierarchies and reactions of the interaction: the weight of liquid plaster deforms an ordered system of aluminium sheets fixed between frames while multiple layers of uneven pieces of silk in delicate shades of pink embrace a bed-like structure, cascading across the framework. The materials have all been dyed with liquid pigment, continuously working its way through the mass, creating a bubbly imprint with a flesh-like effect. Tove Storch’s sculptures are completely quiet. There are no vociferous political slogans, interactive fun or adventurous bang for a buck. Formally Storch works from a minimal and tight concept, where she examines the conventions and borders of the sculpture. In this perspective she is a minimalist of the old school. But there is more going on than purely formal questions and sculptural shifts. The works often contain a kind of poetry. Here we return to the silence and Storch’s ambiguous sculptures. On the outside and from a distance the rectangular showcases appear tight and solid. In a closer view the harmony is disturbed and it is clear that the immediate is carrying a secret, an untold fate of an unknown object that never quite reveals itself. The sealed form is all at once a prison, a coffin in dissolution, a lump of ice cut out of the past – a searching thought in the spectator. Thus Storch’s works starts a process where a thought wanders from the artist and obtains a new reality in the beholder. And it is in this interaction between surface and interior, the tangible and the intangible that the process and the displacement occur in the meeting with Storch’s sculptures, and by that; the adventure. In Storch’s work with the material is the ability to seduce, but also an ability to address the complex, make an idea physical in a very simple and condensed language. With few means she gives language to the nature of form, space and senses. An existential meeting where we most of all meet ourselves and our limits of speech. Storch is a contradictory and searching artist. And if you walk closer, then you will see traces of time in the meticulously executed work and then discover that what you thought was solid is hollow, the formally tight is staggered.
Info: Nils Stærk Gallery, Glentevej 49, Copenhagen, Duration: 26/8-24/10/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00-17:00, Sat:11:00-15:00, https://nilsstaerk.dk
