Frederik Nystrup-Larsen & Oliver Sundquist, Installationview. Photo by Jan Søndergaard.
Press release, January 2019
“Part the wild horse’s mane three times / white crane spreads wings / brush knee twist step / rusty palms turn to moon / repulse a monkey four times / relax / orange dance with lemons / carry the tiger over the mountain / snake creeps through the grass / wave to people in long sleeves / press your face against your mind / become mercury / to fold a carpet / think about where the white goes / when the snow is melting / breath in / breath out / left grasp birds tail / right grasp birds tail / play the lute / make your snake eyes / green dragon drops water / fair lady works shuttles / dive for pearls / and step up to form seven stars single whip / wave hands like clouds / single whip / right heel kick / punch ears with both fists left heel kick / hold rumors in stretched arms / you are allergic / lower movement stand on right legneedle at sea bottom / flash the arm / turn block parry and punch / appear closing / cross hands.”
Soft Boxing is Danish artist duo Frederik Nystrup-Larsen & Oliver Sundqvist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, for which they have developed a series of 9 sculptures of iron, coated acrylic knit and fluorescent LED pipes. The works offer a new reading, bending and breaking of the definition of sculpture as form, spatial relations, volume, line, color, texture. Soft Boxing is motion arrested in time.
The title refers to Tai Chi, the immemorial Chinese martial art consisting of gentle and forceful continuous movements with combination of mind, strength and proper breathing. Soft Boxing is a meticulously phenomenological exploration of this gradual transition of flowing movements, one after another. Breath in, breath out. Zen. Channeling energy from mind, through the body and its gestures, onto the material, Soft Boxing is rendered as a sculptural legacy of Tai Chi’s aesthetic movements.
Frederik Nystrup-Larsen & Oliver Sundquist, Part The Wild Horse's Mane Three Times, 2019. Photo by Jan Søndergaard.
Frederik Nystrup-Larsen & Oliver Sundquist, Green Dragon Drops Water, 2019. Photo by Jan Søndergaard.
Connoting Tai Chi’s poetic charm and fundamental Yin/Yang-duality, each sculpture consists of a skeleton of bended iron strings, determining the object’s biomorphic form – reviving the 1950s idiom of organic design – stretched by a seamless coated acrylic-knitted tube, swung in a direction, a gesture, a command. Soft Boxing is 9 unique variations of this ritual. 9 displacements of form within the transference. We are confronted with these anthropomorphic shapes, quite physically, before they catch our eyes as 9 shadows of the previous and the following luminescent creatures, some dangle from the ceiling, other balance or sit on fragile legs, resembling a butterfly chrysalis or a praying mantis.
Light – immaterial and weightless – have the potential to carry evocative power. Characterized by its weightless luminosity, the sculptures provide a softened, indirect light for a more ambient experience. The delicate, fibrous sleeves disguise the shaped fluorescent LED pipes, while softening their harsh glow, transforming the electric light back to the light of our origin – the natural light from the sun and moon – and this is the light that will continue to fill our rooms.
Frederik Nystrup-Larsen & Oliver Sundquist, Installationview. Photo by Jan Søndergaard.
Frederik Nystrup-Larsen (b. 1992) and Oliver Sundqvist (b. 1991) is a Danish artist duo and currently MA-students at Royal College of Art (Sculpture) and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Design (Furniture). Embossed by their own time, they easily cross boundaries between various media; installations, sculpture, interior design and recycled objects with a flair for treating complex materials with dignity and innovative creativity. Recent exhibitions include Eros Torso, a collection of vases made of repurposed single-use plastic containers, created for the flower shop Tableau in Copenhagen, and Mater, a series of pigmented concrete vases exhibited at the refurbished Noma restaurant in Copenhagen, the design store Totokaelo in New York and at VOLTA14 as part of V1 Gallery’s booth presentation Tables, Pots and Plants. They have recently received acclaim in The New York Times, Sight Unseen, Ignant and Dezeen. Soft Boxing is their first solo exhibition with V1 Gallery / Eighteen.
Opening reception: Friday January 18, from 17-20.
Exhibition period: January 19 - February 16, 2019.
Opening hours: Wed-Friday: 12-18. Saturday: 12-16. Or by appointment.