Ulrik Heltoft: Elements from a Nightmare
Exhibition period January 24th - March 7th 2009
It is a great pleasure to announce Ulrik Heltoft’s third solo
exhibition at the gallery: Elements from a Nightmare. The exhibition
consists of a new video work, photography, and a large architectural
object, and continues Ulrik Heltoft’s familiar, original yet subtle
universe.
Apparently fatally injured and trapped in a mysterious room, a man,
played by Ulrik Heltoft himself, investigates his surroundings with a
paradoxical, trance-like attention. He staggers around the room, looks
out the tower window, observes the furniture and the objects in the
room, and finally collapses on the sofa. The actual room dissolves
itself and converge with a hallucinating internal experience of the
room, which extends into a kaleidoscopic sense of an abyss.
The video Voyage autour de ma chambre (Voyage around my Room) is Ulrik
Heltoft’s interpretation of the French author Xavier de Maistre’s 1794
novel of the same title. de Maistre wrote the novel during 42 days of
house arrest, to which he was sentenced after participation in a duel.
In the novel de Maistre describes his stay in the cramped keep as an
adventurous, imaginary journey to an exotic and foreign world.
Furthermore de Maistre praised this inner journey: it didn’t cost
anything and could therefore strongly be recommended to the poor, the
infirm, not to forget the lazy.
A mental extension of a physical space may take on unreal,
unrecognizable or even nightmarish dimensions. Such places: at once
concrete and imaginary, are the subject matter for also the remaining
works in the exhibition. The photo series White-Out, shot in the Arctic
ice landscape captures the weather phenomenon “white-out” - the polar
landscape and the sky converge into an almost monochrome white surface.
The result is a strange, vague, and disturbing dream-like space. In
this hyper-arctic landscape mental conceptions of dizziness and vertigo
replace the normal physical points of reference.
The large photography Old Mine shows the entrance to an abandoned gold
mine in California. While pebbles and the mountains’ rock structure
appear in almost palpable clarity, the gaze is lost in the impenetrable
darkness of the deep, dark shaft, where both light and the recognizable
world disappears. The mine is a one-man work, and a picture of the
paradoxical relationship between a very concrete and physical project
(as digging a hole in the ground) and all the hopes, fantasies and
dreams associated with this activity.
The sculpture Deception Island is a large architectural object made
from super-light and ultra-reflecting planes. By a very simple design
principle Ulrik Heltoft achieves a highly refined effect: at once
logical and yet completely incomprehensible, the mirror image reflects
the room - and oneself – upside down!
Ulrik Heltoft (b. 1973) is educated from the school of visual arts at
the Royal Danish Art Academy 1995-1999 and from Yale University
1999-2001. He has recently had solo shows at Raucci e Santamaria in
Naples and at Wilfried Lenz in Rotterdam, and moreover he recently had
a screening at the New Museum in New York.xhibition period January 24th
- March 7th
It is a great pleasure to announce Ulrik Heltoft’s third solo
exhibition at the gallery: Elements from a Nightmare. The exhibition
consists of a new video work, photography, and a large architectural
object, and continues Ulrik Heltoft’s familiar, original yet subtle
universe.
Apparently fatally injured and trapped in a mysterious room, a man,
played by Ulrik Heltoft himself, investigates his surroundings with a
paradoxical, trance-like attention. He staggers around the room, looks
out the tower window, observes the furniture and the objects in the
room, and finally collapses on the sofa. The actual room dissolves
itself and converge with a hallucinating internal experience of the
room, which extends into a kaleidoscopic sense of an abyss.
The video Voyage autour de ma chambre (Voyage around my Room) is Ulrik
Heltoft’s interpretation of the French author Xavier de Maistre’s 1794
novel of the same title. de Maistre wrote the novel during 42 days of
house arrest, to which he was sentenced after participation in a duel.
In the novel de Maistre describes his stay in the cramped keep as an
adventurous, imaginary journey to an exotic and foreign world.
Furthermore de Maistre praised this inner journey: it didn’t cost
anything and could therefore strongly be recommended to the poor, the
infirm, not to forget the lazy.
A mental extension of a physical space may take on unreal,
unrecognizable or even nightmarish dimensions. Such places: at once
concrete and imaginary, are the subject matter for also the remaining
works in the exhibition. The photo series White-Out, shot in the Arctic
ice landscape captures the weather phenomenon “white-out” - the polar
landscape and the sky converge into an almost monochrome white surface.
The result is a strange, vague, and disturbing dream-like space. In
this hyper-arctic landscape mental conceptions of dizziness and vertigo
replace the normal physical points of reference.
The large photography Old Mine shows the entrance to an abandoned gold
mine in California. While pebbles and the mountains’ rock structure
appear in almost palpable clarity, the gaze is lost in the impenetrable
darkness of the deep, dark shaft, where both light and the recognizable
world disappears. The mine is a one-man work, and a picture of the
paradoxical relationship between a very concrete and physical project
(as digging a hole in the ground) and all the hopes, fantasies and
dreams associated with this activity.
The sculpture Deception Island is a large architectural object made
from super-light and ultra-reflecting planes. By a very simple design
principle Ulrik Heltoft achieves a highly refined effect: at once
logical and yet completely incomprehensible, the mirror image reflects
the room - and oneself – upside down!
Ulrik Heltoft (b. 1973) is educated from the school of visual arts at
the Royal Danish Art Academy 1995-1999 and from Yale University
1999-2001. He has recently had solo shows at Raucci e Santamaria in
Naples and at Wilfried Lenz in Rotterdam, and moreover he recently had
a screening at the New Museum in New York.
