ECHOES

KANT galleri, Copenhagen, 2019

Photo: David Stjernholm, Torben Eskerod

In the exhibition “Echoes”, Tina Maria Nielsens primary focus is on nature and the archives of art history. Artefacts from the 1st century are paralleled to newly collected bird nests in a kind of temporal equation. The present and the past are recorded and resurrected in tangible sculptures, that work both individually and in interaction with each other.

In the work series “Birds leave their nest”, found bird nests are cast in bronze, orchestrated in compositions – almost floating in a plexiglass grid, which together form an architectural structure, loaded with references and symbolic hints. The clear material clash between the crackling crispy nests with braided thin branches and the transparent podium structures, both lift and highlight each other. In a complementary association, a lightness is replaced with immediate invisible heaviness.

A fragmented antique sculpture from the Danish Art Academy; an elongated male torso with the hint of a second person, is cast in paraffin and constitutes the work “Erotic of unknown origin”. In the material transformation, a kind of contemporary justification arises. The perishability of the material, the smooth surface of the wax and the feeling that the sculpture can melt and disappear, both emphasises and contrasts its inciting motif.

“Biopsies, bit by bit” consists of a number of sections of the sculpture “Erotic of unknown origin”, which are subsequently cast in aluminium. Sculptural depth bores, which appear as fetishized focal points from the landscape of the torso sculpture are objectified ‘samples’, presented in succession.

“Five arms sphere” 22 bronze-cast right and left arms, taken from a late-medieval crucifix, are placed in a circular shape, that sends thoughts in the direction of the rays of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s baroque “Ecstasy of Saint Teresa”. The fragmented arms, separated from the body as a kind of sculptural remains, are inserted into a sunny explosion – providing undertones of spirituality and occultism.

The sculpture “Restored” – a bronze cast variant of Thorvaldsen’s iconic Jesus figure – broken and reconstituted – is resurrected by Nielsen incomplete in the permanent material – bronze, where the restoration traces are vividly clear, thus “Restored” enters a new narrative – now with scars like another super hero.