Margrete Sørensen.

(DK)

TRE KAMRE

Stalke Project

Nørregade 7C, Copenhagen

16.9. to 2.10.1988

Sørensen's Own Order

Stalke Project, Nørregade 7C. Until October 2.

The Tower of Babel, the pyramids, the Hanging Gardens of Semiramis—great cult sites in the myths and the history of human civilization—are among the heavy monuments. Museum inspector Jørn Otto Hansen introduces Margrete Sørensen with a highly philosophical foreword. But the connection is entirely invisible. And perhaps entirely irrelevant.

Like her thousand-year-old predecessors (?), Margrete Sørensen insists on building and constructing, aiming to find a simple architectural expression for order, unity, and ambition, elevated above the randomness and confusing diversity of modern life. It matters little whether her materials are stone, earth, acrylic, cork, rubber, steel, or wood, as she shades and varies them with white wax, graphite, or lacquer.

These materials, which are far removed from the painter's and sculptor's traditional tools, are combined into patterns or systems that, in their regularity, also contain something unpredictable and irregular. There can be something amusingly playful about Margrete Sørensen's combinations, for instance in the sculpture "Symbiosis no. II," where the light of a lamp is planted like a star in a mahogany plate—and beneath it, another plate, pierced with small holes, allows the light to shine through.

The artist does not aim for millimeter precision when she drills, paints, or varnishes. Her works may stand stronger without the organic randomness that sneaks into the systems here and there. Both the series "The Months" and "The Three Eras" (three folded images recently acquired by the National Gallery of Denmark) look most beautiful when their humble components are not too obviously reminded of their modest origin. But on the other hand, naturalness is an essential part of the effect.

PETER M. HORNUNG/Politiken 26,9,1988

MARGRETE SØRENSEN: Three Rooms.

Exhibition featuring sculpture, reliefs, drawings, and installations at Stalke Projekt, Nørregade 7C. Wednesday–Friday 2:30–5:30 PM, Saturday 12–3 PM. Until October 2.

Alongside the flourishing of wild painting in Denmark in the early 1980s, a more thoughtful and tradition-bound art also thrived, exemplified by the artist collective Ny Abstraktion and the small Galleri A Gruppen.

Here, sculptors and painters worked with spatial art rooted in constructivism from the beginning of the century, yet unmistakably modern in their expression. One of them is Margrete Sørensen, who is currently showcasing a cohesive and powerful exhibition in Stalke’s beautiful basement rooms. A preview of the 39-year-old artist’s later exhibitions this year at the Cologne Art Fair and in the Collection of Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery of Denmark.

Margrete Sørensen works with installations and reliefs in mixed techniques. Her preferred material is mahogany, characterized by precise carvings and strange markings. It creates a distinct tone of expectation in the space. You could call it solemn or sacred. Margrete Sørensen’s artistic trajectory is clearly sacral: Her folding doors open up like an altarpiece, marked with deeply personal architectural and geometric traces. Perhaps of infinity, of absence, but also of a contemporary presence, where sharp and soft, colors and shapes, merge in fruitful tension.

It is quite unusual—like her allusion to the Last Supper. A sculptural installation on the floor features twelve thorn crowns floating in twelve bowls of water on a stripped-down cork table. Christ is no more—he is nothing but a tormented memory, a radiant crown in the void, which, at last, could no longer endure. Just like our time—now it cannot either.

STALKE GALLERI - ENGLERUPVEJ 62 - 4060 - KIRKE SAABY - DENMARK - PHONE: +45 2926 - 7433

CONTACT:  STALKE@STALKE.DK

OPEN BY APPOINTMENT