GREEN IS GOLD is an artist run exhibition space, publishing house and studio located in Copenhagen. GREEN IS GOLD was initiated in the autum of 2011 by Danish artists Ditte Knus Tønnesen (b.1982, DK) and Amalie Bønnelycke Lunøe (b. 1981,DK). The space focuses on exhibiting local and international artists with diverse, progressive practices that are independent of trends and tendencies in art. www.gigstudio.dk, www.ditteknus.com, www.amaliebl.dk
GREEN IS GOLD have specifically selected 3 artists whose diverse practices are intrinsically linked through their incorporation of raw materials, their generational associations and their existence as new contemporaries in European art.
Gunnhild Torgersen
Gunnhild Torgersen (b. 1985) is an artist based in Oslo, mainly working with sculpture and photography in a practice focused on functions in communication. Her practice examines language as construction and material, reworking information in text and images through processes of physical interaction. These ongoing physical processes serve as initial elements for form and content. Her deconstruction of literature, advertisement and news translate text on paper into abstract objects and more performative interactions, removing information and suggesting new forms of communication. As in Sphinxes of cement and aluminium when wooden frames for producing homemade paper become constructed barriers when filled with cement. Working with the symbolic value of certain material and forms, Torgersens recent production is showing a more sculptural approach, constructing objects and shapes based on observations and research around language and movements.
Vera Kox
On stretching (1)
Flaccid and enervated the soft, lax wax drapes in an unlikely upward motion.
At a certain wavering pitch it tapers out and descends plummeting downward.
Pummeled almost erotically onto its unlikely companion,
teetering on violence.
Twisted until it cracks.
Undulating under the surface, ridge to furrow, furrow to ridge.
A petrified mass, deporting from tight splash into long lithe solid,
Etching itself into its newfound match.
A limit of discovery, flailing without limbs.
Ripples stretched into dense compound.
Sinuous and elongated lines
Humming, reverberating softly as it departs from itself,
in a flakey, messy ending,
by a hot dead weight.
Apparent across all elements of Kox’s practice is the presence of tensile stress; often emphasized through varying degrees of an object’s abnormality and as an inherent tenet of the material itself. By way of manipulation the different techniques and processes she employs in the making of her sculptures ensure that they assume a degree of patent and self-evident agency, whilst testing the limitations of what is considered visually acceptable. Simultaneously expanding upon the boundaries of our perceptions, as much as she does the material with which she works. In this way Kox plays a game of material hyperbole, assessing the nature of matter through the principles of liminality.
Extract of a text by Dani Admiss 2013
Vera Kox, (b. 1984), is a German/Luxembourgish artist based in London and Berlin. She graduated from the MA Fine Art at Goldsmiths University, London in 2010 and is currently on residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. Her final exhibition at Bethanien opens 21st August 2014.
Hannah Heilmann
Hannah Heilmann (b.1978) is an artist living and working in Copenhagen, Denmark. She works alone and in collaborations. For the time being she's engaged in the web-based radio station generalbootyofwork.net; an open call seeking to gather used contact lenses for sculptures; and the artist run space, TOVES.