Louise Sparre // Rhythm of Life
The exhibition Rhythm of Life in Kunsthal Kongegaardens X-rum (KGX) is an artistic treatment of reflections on connectedness. With her sensual and visually stimulating style, Louise Sparre connects our inner and outer spaces and points out how everything is part of a larger and vital ecosystem.
The works' materials; silk, leather, hair, fur, silicone and aluminum enter into an elegant dialogue with both concept and composition, revealing a landscape that is at once zoomed all the way to the outer galaxies of the universe and all the way into the matter of our bodies and the microorganisms, they consist of. Galaxies, planets and microbes thus make up Louise Sparre's palette, and Rhythm of Life materializes as a poetic round trip into ourselves and out into the great macrocosm.
As is hinted at in the exhibition's title Rhythm of Life, Louise Sparre is not only concerned with internal connections but with the larger processes of life, where everything is always in either a build-up or break-down phase. In this way, she refers not only to the human rhythm of life - from young to old - but to the transformation that takes place all the time at both cellular and planetary level, and which supports the mutual dependence of all living species.
Louise Sparre's Soft Sculptures, which hang out in the entrance area, are perceived as a kind of cocoons that emphasize the transformation process as a supporting theme in the exhibition. At the same time, the sculptures mark the entrance as a spatial transition into and out of the artist's universe.
In the large and very high exhibition space, a galaxy of painted silk hangs on the wall, and in the installation Process - Cypernetic, open, slender aluminum structures are connected to long-haired fur objects in a semicircle, inviting the exhibition visitor to position himself as part of the chain of evolution. "Are you yourself the beginning or the end?", the work seems to ask.
The handle is at once minimalistic and sumptuous, tight and pompous - perhaps even a little naive in its expression - and Louise Sparre consciously uses this dynamic to visually visualize the relationship between life's incredible complexity - and simultaneous perfect simplicity. In this work, Louise Sparre projects a feminine and caring look at the universe as an alternative to the more masculine sci-fi aesthetics that have otherwise defined our view of astronomy, and presents a form of feminist retelling of the gestalt of space.
Rhythm of Life is a body where we ourselves make up the cells in the exhibition's own small ecosystem. Enlightenment man's superhuman view of nature is dismantled and we can return to the world with a renewed awareness of the connectedness of everything - that we are, after all, all made of stardust.
Text by Nanna Balslev Strøjer
The exhibition was supported by The Danish Art Foundation, Kulturudviklingspuljen Aarhus, Den Obelske Familiefond og Slagelse Kommune
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