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The many shades of darkness are the topics at hand in Last Tango’s latest curatorial pairing between Kirstine Roepstorff and Matyáš Chochola. An urge to find truth and solace in darkness is the shared sentiment. Denmark’s representative at the Venice Biennale this year, Roepstorff and laureate of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award, Chochola come together to exhibit new and older works consisting of paintings, sculptures, mobiles, and installations. Sympathetic to the Tibetan schools of mysticism and recent quantum theories, two aesthetic voices create a pensive vibe that is as gloriously spiritual as it is powerful.

KIRSTINE ROEPSTORFF
One hand reaching into darkness. One hand retrieving its fruit. 

At the root of Roepstorff’s work is an acute awareness of balance in its diversity of meanings and ramifications: from the disturbances in the balance of power in today’s world, to the human condition with principles of equilibrium in the mind-body as informed by Eastern philosophical traditions. Roepstorff calls her mobiles “Timbre People”[Klangmenschen]: “We're some kind of vibrational beings that are walking around, sometimes in unison, sometimes not. Whether we are able to go in harmony with our surroundings is very much about how our own inner sound is tuned.”

Roepstorff’s recent immersive intervention at the Danish pavilion during the 2017 Venice Biennale saw the site transformed into a theatre of renaissance. Therein she explored darkness as a positive force of strength and rebirth, through a story of recreation. The release aptly set the tone: “Darkness dissolves form and can be seen as the void out of which all things arise.” And as we know it before the break of dawn is darkness, seeds germinate in pitch dark...

MATYÁS CHOCHOLA
Big Bang Style

Chochola sees that through art there is a possibility to create “new bonds between the contemporary world and ancient rituals.” His large-scale installations come with an air of bricolage using industrially produced waste in combination with hand-made sculptures that are pre-historic, cubist and post-modern in style. While a lot of Chochola’s art has recently sought to present a world in ruins, his primary subject is ultimately a portrait of the consciousness of being human.

Sometimes borrowing symbols from Buddhism and Native Americana, Chochola aligns them with symbols of the mechanization of western life, derelict things and mass-produced objects that once were considered social mainstays, which are now either obsolete or well on their way. These objects are given new significance and inserted into a new value system; CD racks as totems, dated workout bikes as temples of body culture, bulky keyboards as animistic digital wizards, a burnt car as a Memento Mori self-portrait and/or Trojan horse, and used plastic patio furniture retracing the genealogy of the baroque throne. Putting on the Postmodern (thinking) cap, his work stages a “rebirth” of objects. There is a disruption of the sacred-profane dichotomy and an honouring of the everyday wherein he invites the viewer to envision common objects as relevant in ritualistic activity.

NADIM ABBAS
BLUE NOON

In the hour of short shadows you search, in vain. When the carapace of visibility opens; 
CRACK. Only to reveal a fresh layer of skin, hardening like compound eyes staring at the sun.

2. KIRSTINE ROEPSTORFF & MATYÁS CHOCHOLA | SIDE STEP: NADIM ABBAS
Eröffnung: 08.12.17 17:30-20:30
08.12.17 – 27.01.18

Die vielen Schattierungen der Dunkelheit sind das Thema von Kirstine Roepstorff und Matyáš Chochola, die zwei Protagonisten in Last Tangos neuester Kuratoren-Paarung. Die diesjährige Vertreterin Dänemarks bei der Biennale von Venedig, Kirstine Roepstorff, und der Träger des Jindřich-Chalupecký-Preises, Matyáš Chochola, stellen gemeinsam neue und alte Arbeiten aus, darunter Gemälde, Skulpturen, Mobiles und Installationen. Mit ihrer Vorliebe für tibetanische Mystik, als auch für neueste Quantentheorien, kreieren diese zwei ästhetischen Stimmen eine nachdenkliche Atmosphäre, die sowohl spirituell, als auch eindringlich ist.

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Last Tango would like to thank the following for their annual support and/or their specific contribution to this show: