For CHART in Tivoli 2024 V1 Gallery is pleased to present a group of sculptures by Rose Eken (b. 1976). In the context of Tivoli Garden, Eken’s bronze sculptures are juxtaposed with the living garden as their dark counterparts. Eken’s upward-spiraling plants defy expectations, simultaneously mourning and celebrating humanity’s fractured connection with the earth. Eken’s plants strain between matter and form. Deadly nightshade, entangled roses, and dying sunflowers. So appealing in their labored intent to defy gravity, but all of them were deadly poisonous or slowly decaying.
Eken’s work often mines the world of the everyday, while simultaneously veering into a parallel world of darkness and broken connections. The works are a testament to grief and the disenchantment of Modernity in an era of ecological crisis. The transgressive identification with despair, desolation, and death provides a paradoxically generative refuge for outsiders. Rendered in bronze, her works stand as talismans and reminders of our deteriorating relationship with the earth.
Listen to the artist describe the work in their own words:
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I see a Darkness 2022
Rose Eken & Maximilian Brown
Charlotte Fogh Gallery, Aarhus
