Ditte Gantriis
Work from her “COMPANY”.
“The five large collages are printed on long roller blinds, and all combine both digital images and hand-drawn elements. The blinds have been installed spatially in Green is Gold’s exhibition space – a once inhabited apartment – and are thus separated from their original function.
The collages consist of fragmented images of various houseplants collected from online shops, lifestyle blogs etc., whose purpose is to guide us to safe home-design solutions. However the grainy images also evoke enlarged close-ups of the kind of photographic decorations made familiar from franchise coffee shops and restaurant chains or advertising banners from shopping centres and airports. The prints are layered with painterly gestures that, despite their analog quality, seem to reflect the inherent materiality of the digital images.
Whether the severely pruned living room plants are real or fake is difficult to tell. The difference appears insignificant and is perhaps of no consequence since both serve the same purpose: to furnish living spaces with pleasant ambience. The blinds are installed in such a way as to lend the two-dimensional surfaces physical form, which again creates a persistent presence. Something similar applies to the somewhat comical and strenuous soundtrack, which in its cheerful and digitally sounding way attempts to keep the collages company.
With COMPANY Gantriis asks pertinent questions about what keeps who company and vice-versa. What informs the exhibition, as its title also alludes to, is corporate and anonymous design. This aesthetic is the very opposite of the personal, yet it is perhaps exactly what keeps us company in our private and personal spaces.”- Green is Gold
Without any doubt: this is THE best collection from THE ROW.
