24.05.24, 4:30–5pm
GLENTEVEJ 49 · COPENHAGEN
Please join us on Friday, May 24, 4:30 pm at Glentevej 49, Copenhagen, for an Artist Talk with Matthew Ronay and Simon Starling. Ronay will be introducing his solo exhibition, Fruitbody, in conversation with the Turner Prize-winning artist Simon Starling, whose practice spans a wide variety of media, including film, installation, and photography.
Matthew Ronay’s (b. 1976) sculptures are rooted in automatic drawings, allowing the subconscious mind to guide the hand without preconceived notions. By relinquishing control, the artist taps into deeper layers of consciousness, unveiling hidden aspects of the psyche. The works are generally abstract and non-representational, but they resonate strongly with nature’s vocabulary: tubes, bumps, warts, eggs, and orifices. The sculptures also embrace nature’s themes of reproduction and degradation and depend on the space between their parts, implying the intimacy of touch, which viewers often perceive in a haptic way. Working primarily in basswood, Ronay creates all of his works unassisted, investing the sculptures with rhythmic textures and shapes that seem to have “grown” autonomously.
Simon Starling was born in Epsom, England, in 1967. He graduated from the Glasgow School of Art, and was professor of fine arts at the Städelschule in Frankfurt from 2003 to 2013. His practice spans a wide variety of media, including film, installation and photography. Starling won the Turner Prize in 2005 and was shortlisted for the Hugo Boss Prize in 2004. He represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale in 2003 and has had solo exhibitions at Frac Ile-de-France, Le Plateau in Paris (2019), Musée regional d’art contemporain in Sérignan (2017), Japan Society in New York (2016), Museo Experimental El Eco in Mexico City (2015), Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (2014), Monash University Museum of Art in Melbourne (2013), Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in Germany (2013), Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art in Japan (2011), Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams (2008), Power Plant in Toronto (2008), Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne in Vitry-sur-Seine (2009), Tate Britain in London (2013, 2009) and Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin (2009).