A Handfull of Once Kirstine Roepstorff

Press release
Javier Peres is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Kirstine Roepstorff: A Handfull of Once, in the Berlin gallery. This will be the Danish born artist's first one-person exhibition in Berlin.
 
Kirstine Roepstorff's medium is large-scale collage and sculpture using common found visuals and vernacular materials. These works are often overtly political but play with abstractions and figurations recognizable to most viewers. In the present body of work, Roepstorff takes inspiration from the lack of something that once existed but is no longer present. This "presents of absents," (sic) she states, is a determining factor in creating identity in an individual's life and in society. The notion of the void, which Roepstorff explores in this body of work, is depicted as political content, as well as by her use of museum tableaux of objects and artifacts of now destroyed cultures or absent people. Roepstorff's work has often been called neo-feminist, a label that she neither refutes nor accepts. Always preferring to speak of her work in abstract terms, she very much accepts responsibility for both its content and its presentation, all the while considering the real focus of her work as "poetic politics," the dealing with proportions and gravity in the world we live in.
 
The artist will be exhibiting over a half dozen new collages, and one large-scale sculpture. The title of the exhibition, A Handfull of Once, references the multitude of movements, ideas, etc. that exist in the world as a way to get around the absence of the present. This exhibition scrutinizes the idea of longing by placing objects and creating narratives that explore Roespstorff's recent observations of various forms of longing in the media, in politics and even in museum exhibitions.
 
Kirstine Roepstorff was born in Copenhagen in 1972 and received her degree in Fine Art from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, Denmark. Recent museum exhibitions include: "Critical Societies," Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, Germany; "Fairy Tales Forever," ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark (catalog); "Populism," Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius and Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt (catalog); "I feel mysterious today," Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; and, "Momentum," Nordic Festival of Contemporary Art, Moss, Norway. In 2006, Roepstorff will be included in "Bjerge," curated by Erik Steffensen and Stina Toft Christensen, Herning Kunstmuseum, Denmark; "Normalisation" curated by Katarina Stenbeck, Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art, Malmö, Sweden; "The Real and the Fantastic," Den Frie Udstillingsbygning Kunsthalle, Copenhagen, Denmark; and,"Sea-Change/Undo Redo," Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany. in 2006, she will also have a solo presentation of her work at the Esbjerg Kunstmuseum in Esbjerg, Denmark.
 
The artist currently lives and works in Berlin and Copenhagen.
 
A Handful of Once will be on view at Peres Projects, Berlin (Schlesische Strasse 26, Kreuzberg) through March 10, 2006.
 
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