PRESENCE & REMNANTS

17.01.-07.03.2015

Nils Stærk is proud to present Jone Kvie’s solo exhibition presence & remnants. The exhibition is the fifth solo presentation of Kvie’s work by Nils Stærk.

Jone Kvie’s sculptures often depict scientific phenomena casted in various materials. The works are enormously seductive, even though the phenomena they depict often confront us with the impermanence of humanity.

As such the sculptures by Kvie articulate the classical contras between culture and nature. At the same time they also point beyond this dichotomy and showcase a deep connection between the human and the universe.

The three bronze sculptures Recall to mind of a long forgotten presence I-III are miniature representations of scientific phenomena such as gas clouds and star fog. They illustrate the human fascination with outer space and our urge and need to visualize the immeasurable and eternal space in an ascertainable way, as a means to obtain control of outer space.

The feeling of control is short lived. Once you really start to contemplate the size or the age of phenomena such as a star cluster, it becomes clear that we as humans don’t have the necessary measuring tools to adequately measure them. In the end the attempt to measure astronomical phenomena exposes the insignificancy of humanity against the universe as well as nature.

Kvie’s sculptures simultaneously invite to overcome the contrast between nature and culture. The works in the exhibition are material metamorphoses, which also predict their own future conversions. Most works can be seen as material translations where a shape or phenomena has been translated into a new material. Through the astronomical references it is as if the works come to illustrate the universe’s eternal ability to recreate matter. Through time immaterial forces become material and vice versa. The universe is constantly in flux and in this constant flow of change both culture as well as nature are continually reshaped. In a universal perspective both culture and nature are material interactions only separated by degree – both are timely.

Jone Kvie is born in Stavanger, Norway in 1971, but lives and works in Malmö, Sweden. He has studied at the art academies in Oslo and Bergen, Norway. His works are represented in public and private collections in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and USA.