SKRAVERING

2023

Exhibition

Inkjet prints and pigment on paper, unused spare parts for ploughs, floor paint and ink marker

„Skravering“ – graphical shading or hatching.
 
„If you look at Denmark from an aerial photograph, you will quickly realise that it looks more like a sharply drawn graphic than a curving, wild natural landscape. Agriculture in Denmark has nothing to do with nature, but is so man-made that we only have a few percent of so-called ‚wild nature‘ in Denmark.

Sofie Thorsen‘s exhibition at Ringsted Galleriet is based on a Danish ploughed field and the long lines the plough makes as it breaks up the soil. She has imitated this kind of ‚shading‘ of the landscape on the floor of the gallery, with long black lines across the floor, so that the whole space becomes a kind of mapping with a vibrating optical effect. She uses only the floor as an exhibition surface, just as agriculture also thinks in terms of horizontal surfaces. Large rolls of photographs with an earthy red colour on the back are scattered across the black stripes. The 1:1 scale photographs come from a local archaeological dig, and the reddish-brown colour comes from the soil itself.

The scrolls are familiar from Thorsen‘s work, but here they are not hung from steel tubes but lie directly on the ground like collapsed, exhausted bodies, spraying a little and revealing a bit of their interior, in some places supported by red spare parts for agricultural machinery, such as a piece of plough. The tangible tools are contrasted with the more historical dimension of the excavations: the ingenious installation, which takes place only on the floor, manages to make the entire historic room (which used to house the Agricultural Museum) vibrate. The eye enters the room in a new way, suddenly recognising the ceiling with its many damp spots and brown stains. The graphic lines can‘t completely keep the organic dimension out of the picture.“
 
The exhibition was awarded a prize by the Danish Art Foundation. This text is an excerpt from the award citation.

Ringsted Galleriet 2023

Exhibition folder