Kristoffer Kjærskov at Simian

Artist: Kristoffer Kjærskov

Exhibition title: Hypnagogia

Venue: Simian, Copenhagen, Denmark

Date: November 13, 2021 – January 8, 2022

Photography: GRAYSC / All images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Simian, Copenhagen

Note: Exhibition booklet is available here

Many psychologists have described daydreaming as a task-unrelated activity, in the context of which the dreamer tends to focus on their inner life rather than on the outside environment. Memories, plans, images and thoughts are called onto the scene, and their fabric either further sewn together or unfolded into new configurations. Despite being awake and in a state of consciousness, dream-like images extend into a subjective landscape of representations, squeezing their empire in between the person and their surrounding reality.

The wandering mind thus creates its own niche, knitting and fitting together bits and pieces out of its sensual archives of wishes, desires, fears and experiences. It meditates on a patchwork of imaginations; it goes wandering on a path of hypothetical events, whereas others are neglected or excluded, and it climbs into the meshes of connected possibilities. In the niche, events from past, present, and future are intertwined. The dreamer holds onto past events in the mode of the imaginary, memories are repeated and their order revised. Shifting colours beneath this new guise, they give way to further creations of the mind. Daydreaming, in this sense, preserves and produces at the same time.

Rather than engaging with the subject ‘s surroundings, daydreaming marks a break with the time and space of the immediate environment. This break extends into a new inner-outer space. Here, imagination figures in its power to design space. Into the spatiotemporal gap created thus, the bartenders of the probable pour their own cocktails of reality. They bring quiet souls together from around the area: twigs, empty cans, bottles, wires, and autumn leaves. They collect these muted companions and animate their spirits within the temporary architectures of their enclosed inner, an ensemble of the circling material of the natural and the social.

While the inner becomes more and more probable while weaving timely rounds of past, present, and future, natural and social, together, Gaston Bachelard in his “Water and Dreams: An Essay on the imagination of matter” rightly points to water as one material element that is, in its “fluidity and pliability”, constitutive for dreaming. He writes, that even though “dreams are dependent on the four elements (…)”, “water is a complete poetic reality”.

Daydreaming becomes reality in the life of the pond, which is situated above the exhibition space. When sun rays fall into the water, they divert. Red parts are absorbed. Others slow down, they change direction, temporal and spatial dimensions diffuse. Some of them don’t enter, but reflect and create an image.

This creation from the fund of the imagination of nature is visible to the human eye as a reflection on the surface of the water. The pond features a natural mirror, the shape of a square, representational material offered by nature that here comes urbanized. As in mind-wandering, its imaginations are fluid. Figures enter the surface of the pond when exiting the nearby shopping mall, and leave the room of their watery representation when catching the train to the city center from the adjacent metro station.

However, the pond as a mirror only distracts from its vibrant interior. Underneath the mirrored shapes, the life of the pond continues, as an enclosed underworld. Algae slide their arms through this evasive aquaculture. Snails glide upside -down along the surface of the water as though on the edge of oblivion. By crossing it, they lapse into another time. Busy harvesting what the pond grows, they hardly ever leave the square-formed life of their underwater gardens. The snails carry their mobile homes with them. They are ready to retreat into the curvy depth of their property at any point. Who called their raiding around the algae liberty? Workers of the pondside dreams, they’re raising their voices in its enduring murmur.

-Hanna Fiegenbaum

Kristoffer Kjærskov, Hypnagogia, 2021, exhibition view, Simian, Copenhagen

Kristoffer Kjærskov, Shell cast, tin, eggshell, steel, variable dimensions, 2021

Kristoffer Kjærskov, Pond live feed / loop, hydrophone, plexiglass, glass, metal, lemon, resonance speakers, cables, bronze, wood, variable dimensions, 2021

Kristoffer Kjærskov, Hypnagogia, 2021, exhibition view, Simian, Copenhagen

Kristoffer Kjærskov, Partition wall, plaster, wood, thermoplastic boards, fluorescent light, mixed materials, variable dimensions, 2021

Kristoffer Kjærskov, Hypnagogia, 2021, exhibition view, Simian, Copenhagen

Kristoffer Kjærskov, Field framing (Tow), rope, metal, stainless steel, 30 x 22 x 15 cm, 2021

Kristoffer Kjærskov, Field framing (Garden), soil, grass, steel, 30 x 22 x 15 cm, 2021

Kristoffer Kjærskov, Field framing (Outline), metal, plastic, cables, stainless steel, 30 x 22 x 15 cm, 2021

Kristoffer Kjærskov, Field framing (Worker), gloves, fabric, paint, plastic, steel, 30 x 22 x 15 cm, 2021

Kristoffer Kjærskov, Field framing (Tracy), candy wrap, petrified sea urchin, packing material, cardboard, hemp, steel, 30 x 22 x 15 cm, 2021

Kristoffer Kjærskov, Hypnagogia, 2021, exhibition view, Simian, Copenhagen

Kristoffer Kjærskov, Det åbne/The open, mixed materials, variable dimensions, 2021

Kristoffer Kjærskov, Hypnagogia, 2021, exhibition view, Simian, Copenhagen

Kristoffer Kjærskov, Field framing (Fælleden/the Common), ‘Bevar Fælleden’ poster, plastic, leaves, paint, rusted steel, 30 x 22 x 15 cm, 2021

Kristoffer Kjærskov, Field framing (3rd helping hand), paper, cardboard, plastic, wax rabbit figurine, wire connector, trail mix bag, rusted steel, 30 x 22 x 15 cm, 2021