Casa de Gigante, Vale do Pereiro (PT)
March 2025
Duo show with Tjelle Esrom Raunkjær
List of works
Tjelle Esrom Raunkjær A hope was broken Performance, approx 13 min, 2025
Tjelle Esrom Raunkjær Milan, July 25, 2023 I Aquatint and pencil on cotton paper, 2025
Tjelle Esrom Raunkjær Milan, July 25, 2023 II Aquatint and pencil on cotton paper, 2025
Tjelle Esrom Raunkjær Bed sheet I Bed sheed dyed with walnut shells, 2024
Sofie Amalie Andersen fala Portuguese pink marble, 2024
Sofie Amalie Andersen torção Old hammock and marble dust, 2025
Sofie Amalie Andersen Virgula (sense of separation) Danish red granite, 2022
Sofie Amalie Andersen Virgula (dowsing rod) Portuguese white marble, 2023
Sofie Amalie Andersen Virgula (hidden promise) Portuguese two-coloured marble, 2023
What is left when the heart breaks? After the storm; after the fall. What do we do with our desire, all curled up and estranged from its previous destination? What words now? Words? For their duo exhibition at Casa de Gigante, the two Danish artists, Tjelle Esrom Raunkjær and Sofie Amalie Andersen have worked with ideas about love and revolution, broken dreams and the challenge of speaking (any kind of language). Is writing an option if talking fails? Or perhaps sculpting words in stone? The work fala by Sofie Amalie Andersen is both a sculpture and a statement, an imperative, a wish and a contradiction. The sculpture echoes the poem Speak You Also by Paul Celan (in Portuguese: fala tu também) where speaking truly takes on the meaning of speaking also with the shadow of the unspoken, the ambiguous and the unresolved, becoming the only way to overcome apathy. In front of the stone work is an old warn out hammock, twisted and turned in tension, no longer capable of serving its function of carrying a person. In stead it has turned into a sculpture, but also a barrier, keeping us away from any conclusion. Around it, on the floor, are three small stone sculptures, creating an invisible grammar of the room. The stones are curled up in organically shaped droplets – as if they were trying to act as commas in a three dimensional form. Themselves they become an impossibility, or a dream of an alternative linguistic system existing in the material world. Entering the gallery we pass through a walnut dyed textile work, called bed sheet I, which also serves as a backdrop for the performance A hope was broken by Tjelle Esrom Raunkjær carried out at the opening night of the exhibition. The performance is based on the pamphlet There is nothing so whole as a broken heart, and as true as a defeated revolution written and published by the artist himself. The performance and textile installation explore the synchronicity between personal grief and political transformation. How can one imagine a brighter future in times of loss and destruction? On the wall we encounter the two etchings Milan July 25, 2023 I & II, also by Tjelle Esrom Raunkjær. The prints are made with the technique named aquatint, historically used for illustrations in books and newspapers, allowing the possibility of working with nuanced tones instead of just lines. On the prints we see two abstract images with a handwritten text, a narrative or personal diary entry describing the solitary experience of spending a night and day in Milan alone during a rare summer storm. Exhibiting together for the first time the two artist have created an exhibition that brings together sculpture, text, graphic and performance centered around the very foundation of Casa de Gigante: words. How they can give us hope, but also strength as well as weakness, confusion and at the same time clarity.
Text by Sofie Amalie Andersen