Kirstine Roepstorff

Roepstorff’s basis is collages incorporating media images that visualize existing power relations and critically deal with the history and failures of political ideas. By editing and decomposing the original material her works generate new contexts that open up spaces for negotiation and new narratives. The collages are often large using different materials like fabrics, photocopies, cuttings, foils, brass, wood and paper.

“Her approach to collage can be seen as an experimental philosophical strategy. At the heart of it is the cutting-out of images, with the resulting positive and negative spaces carrying traces of the other. It’s from here that the artist has come up with her own slogan: ‘Everything matters, even if it doesn’t seem to.’ Pushing collage into wall-covering tableaux and expansive series with growing formal and narrative complexity, the artist builds drama on the wide scope of existing visual media representations. She incorporates images from the news as easily as historic material and advertising imagery, ‘appropri-arranging’ them in the process of photocopying, scaling, cropping, composing and editing the final work.” (Detta von Jouanne, Flash Art Online, 2010)

Balance is a key word for Roepstorff. Her works are often composed around horizontal lines whose divisions reflect different layers of consciousness. This is especially seen in her brass mobiles which Roepstorff denotes ‘Klangmennesker’ (Sound people) – “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.” (Interview with Kirstine Roepstorff by Sara Thetmark, Kopenhagen Magasin, 2016)

For the so far largest survey and presentation of her work in Denmark, Kirstine Roepstorff has created the massive intervention "Renaissance of the Night", covering the entire south wing of Kunsthal Charlottenborg during the summer of 2018. The exhibition is both a continuation of Roepstorff's Venice project yet a widening and a renewal of the perspectives on darkness and its revitalizing potentials.

Roepstorff is appointed to represent Denmark at the Venice Biennale 2017. The decision of appointing her was made by Gitte Ørskou (chair), Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen, Bodil Nielsen and Jacob Tækker, The Danish Arts Foundation Committee of Visual Arts Project Funding. The Committee acts as commissioner and funds the Danish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

”Kirstine Roepstorff stands as an artist for something special and unique, also in an international context”, says The Danish Arts Foundation Committee for Visual Arts Project Funding who acts as commissioner for the Danish Pavilion and has appointed Kirstine Roepstorff to represent Denmark at the Venice Biennale in 2017.

"The themes in my art are almost unchanged, but my approach has changed. My very young collages were also young people themselves. There was so much material and density of images, input and information that the viewer came to the same place as me. The spaces were few, but they were there and they were and are important. For space is space of potential, a state of uncertainty, balance and dis-balance, light and dark, the part of the structure that the interpretation may ooze from.” (Interview with Kirstine Roepstorff by Sara Thetmark, Kopenhagen Magasin, 2016)

In recent years Roepstorff has created several large scale public art projects in Denmark, including "The Gong" for Dokk1 in Aarhus (2015) and "Klangfrø" for the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen (2014). In the spring of 2017 she completed a major decoration at the Sygehus Lillebælt Hospital in Kolding and when the new town hall in Middelfart was inaugurated in September 2017 it featured a large scale brass mobile by Roepstorff titled "Heart of the Whale".

Kirstine Roepstorff (born 1972) is a Danish visual artist who lives and works in Fredericia (DK). Roepstorff studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen from 1994-2001 and Rutgers University, Mason School of Fine Art (MFA), USA (2000). In 2016 she was appointed to represent Denmark in the Danish Pavilion at the 57th International Art Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia 2017, entitled “VIVA ARTE VIVA” and in 2018 her work are presented at Kunsthal Charlottenborg in the extensive solo exhibition Renaissance of the Night

A current but profound preoccupation with darkness in all its shapes and spirits materialized itself most intensely at the 57thVenice Biennale where Roepstorff was appointed Danish national representative and made an extensive intervention in the Danish Pavilion. However, darkness as a transitory and regenerating force continues to determine an artistic direction generally concerned with exploring gaps, breaks and in-betweens. The task and challenge of today lie in a fundamental re-accentuation of the dark potentials, for darkness is beginnings: of art, of lives and of visions.