Sophia Kalkau – The Material and the Egg
Mar 28th 2019 to Aug 11th 2019
Enter a dreamy refuge in a chaotic world
In spring 2019 Kunsten will present a major solo exhibition of work by Sophia Kalkau (b. 1960), who since the early 1990s has made a name for herself as one of Denmark’s leading contemporary artists. The exhibition, entitled The Material and the Egg will feature a wide-ranging selection of Sophia Kalkau’s most important works from the past 20 years. You will be enclosed in a beautifully composed exhibition universe, created specifically on the basis of Alvar Aalto’s unique museum building.
Hard versus soft
Discover poetic white, matt black and silver-tinted sculptures and photographs, in which body and sculpture come together in quirky, unsettling and wonderful expressions. Kalkau’s sculptures are characterised by their geometrically simple, light and pure appearance. Together with the artist’s own body, the sculptures often appear as props in her photographs, with the basic geometrical shapes – the circle, the oval, the sphere and the cube – forming part of subtle hybrids. The photographs look at the relationship between organic body and abstract geometry, between person and object.
Dream and reality
Sophia Kalkau’s works are the result of unmistakably perfect craftsmanship. Their expression hovers between photography, poetry, sculpture and performance. They feature antitheses: seriousness and humour, everyday life and surrealism, cool abstraction and dreamy sensuousness.
The exhibition will juxtapose works old and new in a constant mutual dialogue, interacting beautifully with the building and the viewer. You will be drawn into a world that flits back and forth between dream and reality.
About Sophia Kalkau
Since the early 1990s, Sophia Kalkau (b. 1960), a graduate of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, has exhibited regularly both in Denmark and abroad at venues including Glyptoteket, Overgaden, Brandts in Odense, Horsens Art Museum and Holstebro Art Museum. Over the years, Sophia Kalkau has received countless, highly significant honorary awards. Most recently, in spring 2018, she received the Danish Art Critics’ Prize for her exhibition, Line of Circles at Sorø Art Museum. The previous year, the exhibition also won a prize from the Danish Arts Council’s grants committee.
Sophia Kalkau’s work hovers between various artistic genres, which she constantly puts to the test and expands. In addition to her sculptures and photographic works, she has also written prose and books on aesthetics.
Kalkau’s decorative commissions can be seen in a number of venues throughout Denmark: for example, Skejby Hospital, the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense and Grøndal Church. She is also represented in a number of Denmark’s art museums and important art collections, including ARoS, ARKEN and the New Carlsberg Foundation.
Kunsten Contemporary
The exhibition, Sophia Kalkau – The Material and the Egg is part of Kunsten’s exhibition series, Kunsten Contemporary, which celebrates experimental contemporary art. The museum invites relevant contemporary artists from Denmark and abroad to create exhibitions that relate to the venue and the unique architecture of the building and/or tackle important societal issues. Previous exhibitions in the series include: Kaarina Kaikkonen – You Remain in Me (2018), William Kentridge – The Refusal of Time (2018), Nina Saunders –I Heard a Voice in the Midst of the Four Beasts (2017), Omer Fast – Continuation of the Present (2017) and Imran Qureshi – Idea of Landscape (2016).
For the press
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Kristeligt Dagblad
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Nordjyske
The exhibition is supported by
Dansk Tennis Fond
Grosserer L.F. Foghts Fond
