IDA KVETNY (DK) / LARGE FLESH COLOURED CONTAINERS / 22.08.-29.09.2014
 
Kvetny takes us new places in her teeming universe at the exhibition Ida Kvetny: Large Flesh Coloured Containers where painting, drawing and sculpture go hand in hand. Insistent eyes, faces, wrenches and totem poles meet abstract elements, and together they lead us into a parallel reality where the impossible is made possible.
 
In cool blues Kvetny depicts a universe freed from overriding principles. A veritable storm of figures and ornaments hits the viewer full in the face when encountering her pieces. The eye will rarely rest on one thing for long. When you close in and follow the developments and connections of the figures, it is as if you are exploring a thoughtscape, where one thought bleeds into the next until you land at an hithero unknown location.
 
In Kvetny’s most recent pieces we experience a struggle between room-creating and room-destroying elements. In the large (234 cm long), rectangular painting Coastal we are faced with a coastal landscape. However, despite the fact that horizontal lines are drawn between the sky, the sea and the beach, the three elements seem to mix. The sea bed has been thrown onto the beach in the shape of aquatic looking plants and creatures.
In the painting Invidia (latin for envy) Kvetny’s well-known blues have been replaced by a more somber palette. Just like in her drawings, it is the greyscale colour scheme that tell the story: elements fall down, figures scatter and black shadows encapsulate the multiple scenes been played out. The story of a chaotic inner life, a mind in open revolt, that easily invokes the piece’s title: the consuming, incontrolable feeling of jealousi.
 
Kvetny’s art can be seen as a manifestation of the chaotic inner life, a visual representation of the mish-mash of impressions, people, objects; all the things we encounter in our daily lives. Simultaneously with meeting Kvetny’s peculiar world, we meet our own personal world. A world that occasionally can seem chaotic and overwhelming, busy and immeasurable. But like Ida Kvetny’s art, also enriching, beautiful and delightfully challenging. Kvetny stuffs the picture until it’s bursting, as if she was Hieronymus Bosch gone sci-fi, and as a viewer you can only be overjoyed that in Kvetny’s work, more is more.
 
Ida Kvetny currently lives and works in Copenhagen. In 2007 she took a Master in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. Her works have been shown recently at Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles (2013); Nikolaj Kunsthal in København (2013-14) and at Munch Gallery in New York (2014). In addition, she has exhibited at places such as Holstebro Kunstmuseum; Charlottenborg Kunsthal; Museum of Art, Seoul National University; Brandts in Odense; at the major collectors show “Mad Love” (2007) at Arken Museum of Modern Art and in numerous galleries. Spring 2012 she was included in “Kraks Blå bog”. She has been awarded several prices among these Young Artist of the Year 2006 (Danish Leader’s Organisation).
 
 
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  • An Audio Guide to The Kvetny Galaxy