Artist: Mette Winckelmann
Exhibition title: Keep your laws off my body
Curated by: Paola Paleari and Anne Zychalak Stolten
Venue: Vestjyllands Kunstpavillon, Videbæk, Denmark
Date: November 12 – December 18, 2022
Photography: Jacob Friis-Holm Nielsen / images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Vestjyllands Kunstpavillon
In her solo exhibition Keep your laws off my body at Vestjyllands Kunstpavillon, Mette Winckelmann works with negotiation and seeks new potentials in the already-defined. She rethinks structures and materials on the physical and conceptual levels, and examines divergent positions to the perspective that declares an entity as “concluded”.
A linchpin in Winckelmann’s practice is the interest in understanding the empirical, spiritual and social implications of having a body, and she explores this in her approach to materials and abstraction.
With this as a starting point, Winckelmann revisits pre-existing materials in an attempt to free them from their assigned identity and disturb the scope they were originally allocated to. A variety of leftovers from previous productions – such as building materials from the renovation of Dannerhuset in 2011, and textile cut-outs from older works – form the inventory at play here.
Like in circuit bending – the process of modifying electronic devices to achieve effects other than initially intended – the artist recombines, reassembles, retouches and paints over, creating a site-specific installation comprised of manifold pieces that altogether reclaim a new meaning.
They are works that individually speak for themselves and insist on their own agendas. The use of fluorescent tubes in the space, incorporated exclusively into the works themselves, supports their physical presence and demonstrates that their identity comes from within the object and shines through the surface.
In the artistic as well as in the social sphere, predetermined choices tend to define how we function and relate to ourselves and each other. With her intervention at Vestjyllands Kunstpavillon, Mette Winckelmann suggests that it is possible to stretch and negotiate the incorporated structures in favor of an alternative existence.
The exhibition is supported by The Danish Arts Foundation. The VK contemporary art program 2021-2022 is curated by Paola Paleari and Anne Zychalak Stolten and supported by Det Obelske Familiefond and The Danish Arts Foundation.
