chiara bugatti & absalon kirkeby

at roos

(2022) Exhibition notes. (CHIARA). When I finally got the chance to visit her studio what immediately struck me were the traces of her process from idea to finished work. Small models, drawings, sketches. Written notes. MATERIAL. Novel constructions I couldn't quite contextualize. Like the data in between A and B. ‍When I told Chiara what I wanted to bring to the exhibition, she looked at me skeptically. But somehow something in me managed to put into words what I saw. It was like talking to a person with a language all their own and it made me warm inside. Whatever she is saying, I want to hear her voice. There’s an edge to it that testifies to everything she has been through. She started working in my apartment on August 28th. I left to go to work early in the morning and came back after she left in the evening. The room slowly changed day by day, organically. I kept thinking how brave she was. Brave enough to expose unfiltered pages of her "diary". To let go of one's own ambitions. I don't know if I would dare. I felt guilty rubbing my hands as I surveyed the growing work. Days passed, weeks. Every evening a new flower had emerged. Once she said that it was so nice to get to know each other this way. As a shortcut to a deeper relationship. I had been given the privilege of getting to know the content of each form. The commonality of Chiara’s objects does not stem from an ambition to make finished works. It is rather an exposure of materialised thoughts that’s been shot from the hip. Quick dialogues from a square in Milan. In process. Like a month's worth of diary entries, in which someone is trying to come up with a conclusion, torn out and presented to the world.

ABSALON is presented with an image that knocked me out at first glance. Edderkop. (inkjet print). The exhibition in its entirety was planned to take place in early summer. Certain circumstances postponed the opening date and this picture was to be shown in a gallery in Copenhagen, while Chiara got busy with other exhibitions. Understandably, Absalon wanted to exhibit a new image and sent me a series of about twenty new ones to pick from but I didn’t want to compromise the dynamic I had envisioned. The overall picture was based on an interaction, which I think of in retrospect as an interplay between the unspoken and a more direct language. This became clear as Chiara's installation took shape. How the two resonated dynamically. At first sight I was struck with the interplay between his and her work by color/medium/material. What components does Absalon's visual world consist of? Looking more closely, the image is made up of ingredients that I cannot recognise or understand. Like Chiara’s objects. Torn between the urban and the natural. A kind of intimacy that becomes uncomfortable, unbalanced and even dangerous. That duality. Which reappears in Chiara's materials. As if someone said something straight to the point (I mean this particular picture). It seems to want to tell you something. Compared to Chiara's unspoken. Starting point: classical portrait. Time travel. It is difficult to place it in any kind of compartment. Or to lock it into an established language or style. The technical composition takes it to the forefront of time. I wonder if Absalon has a more formalistic approach to his work. I don't think it's his intention to say things. I think he simply consists of a complexity of thoughts that automatically produces psychological tension. // Jonas roos‍. Chiara Bugatti (b.1991, Italy) is a visual artist based in Stockholm. Absalon Kirkeby (b.1983, Denmark) is a visual artist based in Copenhagen.

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