Når bjergene blinker til mig,
fyldes mine øjne med sand
When the mountains wink
at me,my eyes gets filled with sand
Agder Kunstsenter, Kristiansand, Norge 2023.
“Regitze's sculptures appear as small mountains and bodies mixed together; a mountain that has collected bodies, a body that is in transformation into a mountain. Creatures in transition, something that is in transformation.
In this work, Regitze works sculpturally with questions about which landscapes we absorb and are a part of, both locally and globally. Last summer she visited Kristiansand and explored the city - as a visiting Dane, interested in the city beach and the holiday town atmosphere.
She bought towels from local thrift stores and collected sand and gravel from city sites. Regitze has mixed the towels and sand materials from Kristiansand with similar materials from his home in Sorø. Together they make up a sculpture group consisting of 10 sculptures; the towels are dipped in concrete, glue and other binders so that they become hard as shells and then stones, sand and gravel are poured over them. The towels emphasize the intimate connection between the landscape and the body, which is at play when we use the beach either as a tourist or a local. In this way, the work focuses on our relationship with the landscape around us and how our identity is always also linked to the landscape. How the extraction of raw materials, our consumption and our movement in the world are constantly reshaping the landscape around us.
The work is a sculptural study of how we – both materially and emotionally – absorb our surroundings and how we can create a new relationship with our landscape. When and where are we so closely connected to the landscape and nature that we want to take care of it? How do the close ties to our surroundings arise, which also give us a sense of responsibility? Regitze also contributes with the work In my pockets, in my dreams, photographs mounted on the wall that relate to the same theme.
Regitze Engelsborg-Karlsen (b. 1989) lives and works in Sorø and was educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and the Jutland Academy of Fine Arts in 2018. Raw materials such as sand and gravel are central to Karlsen's sculptural works, which were most recently presented in the exhibition Koloristerne at The Free Exhibition Building, Copenhagen (2023) and which has previously been exhibited at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde (2021) and Vejle Art Museum (2020). Regitze has an investigative approach to his materials and their extraction and starts from subjects and problems such as the body, politics, ecology, feminism and materiality. Through his works, Karlsen tries to strengthen and rethink our understanding of the landscape and its materials and asks questions about the world we want to live in.”
- text by Joachim Aagaard Friis.
