Please be Reckless
Formation Gallery
08 Mar 2024 – 20 Apr 2024
On the occasion of International Women’s Day on 8. March Formation Gallery collects four younger female contemporary artists for a group exhibition. The collective focal point is the depiction of female experiences of society’s expectations, limits, and wishes as well as reactions to adapting to these. The plurality of experiences is portrayed equally differently in the works through everything from exploration of public spaces, nuancing of the female portrait through painterly techniques, interpretation of sexuality and intimacy in a theatrical space, and embroidery of goddesses of the spring. In common is also, that there is an insistence on occupying a position in the world with a liberating spontaneity, where women do not request but live out their existence in an unrestrained, playful, shameless, and sensitive manner without consideration - completely reckless.
The four artists participating in Please Be Reckless are:
Anna Aagaard Jensen insists on the femininity of her objects, where inspiration is drawn from the female physique when shaping the flower’s beautiful, pink, and delicate expression. In contrast to this, massive, clumsy feet are thrown up on the wall (Rebellious Daisy) and spread into a wide step (Shantay). Similarly, we are being met with the duality of the table mirror Flâneuse #4 Table Mirror when it simultaneously spreads its flimsy legs and turns its mirror confrontationally upwards. The spreading legs and comic character of the works are a natural extension of Jensen’s almost activist design practice, where attention is drawn to the (missing) space women take up in public spaces. The aim is to make women used to sitting with spreading legs, taking up space instead of forcingly crossing their legs in an attempt to present themselves “flattering”, requiring less space or avoiding sexual connotations.
Isabella Vella created a theatrical space to rethink performativity and narrative filled with symbolic and art historical references in the paintings with acrylic and foraged pigments on paper. The female characters are protagonists in the story and give their rightful agency and complexity. In the painting First Temperament the work Madonna and Child Between Saint Mary Magdalene and Saint Catherine by Master of Vicchio di Rimaggio, are being reinterpreted, where the portrayed women’s sexuality is embraced through sprouting vines, enclosing hair and hips balancing Maria Magdalena's ointment. Another scene is installed in the work In The Unswept Fortress, where the female protagonist is allowed inner complexity by the dark background of a flaming dramatic landscape simultaneously with mildness through symbols of connection and love scattered in the foreground. In Vella’s work, the theatrical is parallel to an intimacy between the female characters and their surroundings wherein there hides a mystique and depth.
Johanne Helga Heiberg often appropriates text and visual material from female figures from literary and art historical contexts throughout time and place, through her use of visual traces in drawing or textiles, she works on actualizing and mediate a relevant and contemporary story in her works.
In Please Be Reckless Heiberg exhibits three embroideries that are manifested in this time of year on 8. March. The embroideries portray three goddesses, all connected to the spring or the vernal equinox in each their way; Freja, Eostre and Marzanna. Freja from the Nordic mythology embrace being the goddess of love, war, destiny, and not least fertility. Eostre from the Anglo-Saxon paganism is believed to be connected to the origin of Easter and Marzanna of the Slavic deities symbolizes the death and rebirth of winter. All three goddesses have, due to their connection with a change of seasons, fertility, death, and the cycle of life, have through history been sacrificed in hope of a good harvest. They carry both the dark and the light in nature and rotation of the year, with the life of spring and the calmness of winter.
Anne Torpe employs painterly techniques with shifts between patterns, both visible and transparent layers, and monochrome color fields, alongside more tactile disruptions of composite canvases, creating a sort of reconfiguration of pictorial space. Within the same practice, abrupt color shifts occur, for instance, in skin tone. This also creates an opportunity in the portrayal of the characters, where they are presented nuanced both concretely and symbolically. Women are the primary characters and they can originate from art history, vintage magazines, and private photos. These women are then inserted into Torpe's imaginary space, where they blend into waving horizons, stripe patterns, or more figurative landscapes. They pose in front of mirrors, rest, read, play the guitar, contemplate, and daydream in an intense private sphere. Often nude but covered in layers of paint. These women are strong and confident despite an art historical tradition associating nudity with vulnerability. Whether they confront the viewer with a direct gaze or seem indifferent to the viewer's presence, the women stand as empowered, driven by their own desires rather than the viewer's. As if simply 'being oneself' has always been their raison d'être.
Biographies
Anna Aagaard Jensen (b. 1990) has a bachelor in Furniture Design from The Royal Dansk Academy of Fine Arts with a Master's in Fine Art & Design from the Design Academy Eindhoven. She lives and works in Rotterdam and is the head of designLab123 at Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Jensen has recently participated in an exhibition at Centraal Museum Utrecht with one of her characteristic chairs A Basic Instinct (2018) and has, among other places exhibited at Friedman Benda, New York, Functional Art Gallery, Berlin, Salone del Mobile, Milan, Italy and Everyday Gallery, Antwerp. She is represented by Etage Projects in Copenhagen.
Isabella Vella (b. 2001) graduated from Etobioke School of the Arts in Visual Arts and later earned a bachelor's degree in Environmental Science & Geography from McGill University. She is represented by Dianna Witte Gallery in Toronto, where she is exhibiting a solo show this year. Vella lives and works in London and has exhibited in galleries across Canada and New York.
Johanne Helga Heiberg (b. 1987) graduated from Funen Art Academy in 2015. She lives and works in Copenhagen and is represented by Format Artspace. Heiberg's practice includes drawings, textile works such as embroidery, and graphic novels such as Dear Frida and I have my heart in my mouth. She received work grants from the Danish Arts Foundation between 2018 – 2021 and has exhibited at Kunsthal Sophienholm, Format Artspace, C4 Projects, and Kunstbygningen in Vrå.
Anne Torpe (b. 1981) is a graduate of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and has studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich. She is represented by Hans Alf Gallery, where she recently had a solo exhibition, and has also exhibited at Kastrupgaardsamlingen, Rundetårn, Städtischen Kunsthalle München, and Den Frie Udstillingsbygning
