While working at punk music venues as a teenager in Copenhagen, Rose Eken developed a fascination with concert detritus. The objects she was made to clean up after an event -cigarette butts, drug paraphernalia, beer cans, discarded clothing, and lost cell phones -became emblems of punk rock culture, which she now reproduces in the form of hand-painted ceramic miniatures. Sculpting objects found in concert halls, kitchens, studios and similarly ubiquitous locations, Eken methodically replicates detritus often placing them very systematic in a grid, suggestive of scientific categorization. Her arrangements and sheer amount of production assume an anthropological quality, documenting and preserving the relics of a culture and celebrating a history in process. While Eken also produces embroideries, drawings, and videos, she favours clay for its versatility and clumsy form, as shaping and firing warp the object along the way, resulting in unforeseen and unpredictable imperfections.
Rose Eken, b. 1976, holds an MA from Royal College of Art, London. She has exhibited extensively in and outside of Denmark. Recent and major exhibitions include The Fools Journey, Eighteen, Copenhagen, DK; Light Your Shine with Mie Elise Kjærgaard, Gammelgaard, DK: And the Forests Dream Eternally, V1 Gallery, DK: Billboard Istanbul, TR; In Residence, MOCA Tucson, Arizona, US; Afterbeat, Horsens Art Museum, DK, and Remain in Light, The Hole, NY, US. Her work has been permanently acquired by ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Horsens Art Museum, The New Carlsberg Foundation, and The Danish Art Foundation for Visual Arts. Eken lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Eken is represented by V1 Gallery, Copenhagen and Charlotte Fogh Gallery, Aarhus
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