Hot Contemporary Artist in Aalborg

Leave the chaotic world behind and enter a dreamlike refuge.

That is Kunsten’s tantalising invitation to visitors prior to their launch of The Fabric and the Egg, an exhibition that really captures the spirit of our times.

“Sophia Kalkau’s works have a decidedly alluring sensuousness. They have a physical appeal and inspire thoughtfulness and contemplation in an otherwise hectic, fleeting world,” says Caroline Nymark Zachariassen, one of Kunsten’s curators and, most pertinently, the curator of this exhibition.
 
Since the early 1990s, Kalkau has been making a name for herself as one of Denmark’s leading contemporary artists. She exhibits regularly both in Denmark and abroad. Her decorative commissions can be seen all over Denmark: for example, at 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 in important art collections, including those of ARoS, ARKEN and the New Carlsberg Foundation.

Over the years, Sophia Kalkau has received countless, highly significant honorary awards, including the 2018 Art Critics’ Award.

Life’s Big Issues

Entitled The Fabric and the Egg, the exhibition will feature a broad selection of Sophia Kalkaus’s most important works from the last 20 years, alongside a number of new works.

“In a number of works for this exhibition, Kalkau drew inspiration from Alvar Aalto’s snow-white, light-filled marble building. This has resulted, for example, in two brand new works, whose themes evoke life’s big issues, including sorrow and joy, and life and death,” says Caroline Nymark Zachariassen.

Kalkau’s works are poetic white, matt-black and silver-coloured sculptures and photographs, in which body and sculpture merge. The effect is whimsical, disturbing and marvellous. Besides their high quality craftsmanship, Kalkau’s sculptures employ the oval, the sphere and the cube to create something that is geometrically simple, light and pure.

The works are about the relationship between the organic body and abstract geometry, and between person and object.

“In The Fabric and the Egg you will see works that hover between dream and reality, light and darkness, and serious and humour. Their quirky, abstract, aesthetic universe piques our curiosity,” says the curator.
Sophia Kalkau’s works are poised 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 the subject of aesthetics.

The exhibition will run from 28 March to 11 August 2019.