catalogue text by Louise Wolthers

Enjoy the Noise!

“Amazing Grace…” is the title of one of Kirsten´s art works, but it is in fact characteristic, too, of her approach to her themes altogether: She conjures up surprising, humouristic and poetic images of anything from ordinary people in everyday
situations, to celebrities performing on TV and in magazines, to simple plasticine puppets, who are exposed to all sorts of adventures on her work table.BUT: don´t be mistaken! The subtle grace doesn´t translate into innocent idyl. It is ambiguous, often satiric, and sometimes disturbing.It can function as a subversive attack on media stereotypes and as an invitation to be concerned with the responsibility as a consumer in visual culture.
The monumental collage “Jenny´s Occasional Songs” creates a feeling of visual overload: One can almost visualize
a whole year´s issues of tabloid magazines compressed, which immediately makes you border on a state of nausea – a little bit like smokers forcing themselves to count the number of cigarettes they have inhaled during a year! Mainstream medias make us black in the face and decrease our brain capacity. A collage, however, is ,of course, not just a random accumulation
of images. Kirsten has carefully – and uncannily- put together excerpts from a variety of magazines, in order to have them conjure up complex connections. In the enormous flow of images, there are suddenly connections established,
which can be of formal or thematic nature. One gets quite dizzy following the visual associations and is constantly inclined to find new ways of reading the collage. Still, the collage actually suggests a certain linearity, in that one may start out in the left, upper corner, reading it onwards like a score. The potted plants act like a small, well arranged front garden to the big mad house, and they are like small “drops” of notes before the big clap of thunder. In the course of the work, the “music” speeds up – like the quiet summer tune turning into noisy fusion music, according to the collage´s principle of calculated random.
Sound is litteraly present in the animation “Surprising Grace – the Movement in Everything”. It begins with a loud interval tone from TV. The tone is chopped into bits, becomes rhytm and develops into a mix of popular- and electronic music. This sound track supports the movements of the characters of the cut-out animation: The pope plays the drum on the heads of his nuns, bikini dressed grand ma´s and other anonymous people dance. And what an amazing dance! Heads are rolling and arms are flapping so strongly that they come off. They fly and fall, and limbs litteraly end up in a pile of paper. Inserted inbetween are collage sequences. The screen gradually fills with characters who form suprising
collages: arch types like Adam and Eve in an updated version of pale and fat Mr. and Mrs. Jensen mingle with foam born Venus on the shell. Eddie Murphy is seen sitting in the lotus position on top of Hitler´s head, which argues his loud politics into the ear of a rather sedate Danish vicar.The collage form makes it posssible to create connections which break down prevalent power relations. Due to the seriality in “I´m still Jenny from the Block”, spaces of meaning arise between the images.These spaces also turn prejudices and hierachies upside down – as e.g. seen in Cherie Blair´s blonde judge´s wig, followed by the famous female suicide bomber´s muslim scarf.
In her collages as well as in her animations, Kirsten manipulates with pespective and space.That´s why the figures seem to be crowding towards us, in e.g.
“Jenny´ s Occasional Songs”.The gaze may search for stability, but there´s no real firm background – only recurrent neon colured surfaces and blotches of colour, which don´t contribute to quiet and clearness, but to noise. By exaggerating the visual noise of the medias, Kirsten makes us attentive of it, and reveals it´s fictional character. She dismantles the normative
images we have about ourselves and each other. Especially the stereotypes in regard to gender, that continue to dominate the prevailing, visual commmercial culture, are questioned.
In “Jenny´s Occasional Songs” the massive wall of images is supplemented by a lighter, open space in the right part of the work. In this part, the occasional songs drift around, signifying inner states of minds and images.These are the poems about and from “Jenny´s” life.
They are, however, far from the genre of feel good party songs written for birthdays etc.Absurd and fragmented, they form a blurred portrait of Jenny as a deeply schizophrenic person- perhaps a mix of all the portraits in the collage?
There is not only irony, but also an empathic sympathy towards the main character, which by the way, is characteristic of Kirstenś relationship with her subjects.They are rendered and portraited with tenderness, which makes it possible to identify with them, whether they have been “shot” at the amusement park, or are seen dancing at old age in a bikini at the beach.
And the viewers of the works can’t pretend not to participate in the entertainment mekka of the medias, either.Because even as a passive consumer of images one contributes to the exchange- and the contructions of meanings.With combinations of images whose glaring contrasts evoke sheer joy, Kirsten shows us, that the dissonances of the medias don t
resonante- so therefore she has created her own alternative cacophony.

Louise Wolthers, Art Historian, August 2005