Never before have we moved around as many things as we do today. Goods are shipped worldwide around the clock. People move themselves around, they commute with bags and trolleys between destinations or move homes with full moving boxes. Our lives are full of things we acquire to make our daily routine and work easier, other things we take with us and have trouble parting with.

In the exhibition Moving Things Signe Guttormsen addresses the things that we use in our everyday life without giving them much thought: bottles, chairs, swipe cards, batteries etc.; things that we use and move around, things that change places in a routine, everyday context, until they no longer work or we no longer need them.

As a counterbalance to this superficial handling of objects, Signe Guttormsen takes an autobiographical approach. An approach inspired by a vast number of things she has taken over from her father’s artist studio. It is the memory of the contexts that the objects have appeared in, and the specific characteristics and nature of those objects, that interest the artist.

In a literal sense these specific objects become material for Signe Guttormsen’s paintings on plywood and aluminium. The contours, structure and nature of the objects become visible as both substance and boundary. Through imprints in acrylic and outlines burnt onto works, the spatiality of the objects are transformed into traces on their surface. It is a working process with the paintings where actual depictions are formed on a 1:1 scale, not as narration but as action.

Signe Guttormsen (b. 1964) was educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, 1986-1993 and Rijksakademie van beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, 1991-1992. She is concerned with topics rooted in contemporary life and in how we organise ourselves. This can be seen in her site specific works at, among other places, University of Southern Denmark, Midtsjællands Gymnasium, Ringsted and BaneDanmark. Later this year she will finish an integrated art project at the new headquarters of MTHøjgaard in Søborg and a project for The Region of Sounthern Denmark at The Mental Health Services in Vejle in January 2017.

Photo credits: Jan Søndergaard