source: artkonst

Copenhagen-based artist Tove Storch creates objects using the contrast between hard metal frames and airy silk textiles. The outer structures demarcate cubic volumes of space, where the inner textiles seem to compartmentalize the air. Walking around the objects they first appear as Asian paper screens, gently blocking the viewers sight across the room. As one passes through the side of the structure though, the silk surfaces seem to almost disappear for a second into fine lines that cut through the air. The moving spectator, confronting the side view of the sequence of thin textile materials, experiences a moment of shift before the cuts recede into screens again.
The structures of Storch, being slightly larger than the body, provide a promise of feeling with only sight, of sensing with vision alone. The composition of tangible materials makes the art affect on a bodily level, without necessarily ever being in direct physical contact with the body. Whereas one traditionally thinks of the body as opposite of ideas and thoughts, these objects makes us aware of how spirit and matter always are intertwined. Touching is made by thoughts – ideas are based in the flesh of the body. The artist speaks of the process of working with materials as learning “how the shape was made, rather than the shape I intended to make”. Thus there is the negotiation between thought and material, where what is primary and secondary between these is not always clear.
The structures of metal frames and textiles also seem to tap into western industrial history. Reminiscent of early industrial looms, some of these artworks by Storch share an iconography with devices from the age of the industrial revolution. Present and past seem to conjugate when one considers these screens in frames with the insight that the silk looms of the enlightenment era were the precursors to the modern day computer. Storch’s objects with their multiple screens thereby seem to point both to present day digital culture and to the 18th century silk industry with programming of looms by punched cards.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: kirkhoffdk

Tove Storch works primarily in the field of kinetic sculpture and has made several site specific installations. She moves from one kind of representation to another when she produces virtual volumes by projecting a 3D rendering on to the same shape built as a fragile, 2D wooden construction. In her Roller Paintings she investigates how colour defines form. She examines sculptural presence and spatial experience by asking questions like: How does a form, volume or shape appear? – What are the formal rules for creating a sculpture? And how can you escape from these basic premises of a sculptural object and develop new/different methods? With logical progression she combines aspects from the virtual and the physical world in order to create objects. The results belong to a third kind of spatial reality.
Storch’s sculptures are static while deeply engaged with movement. She investigates how sound or movement would look physically. When she made a listening post in a public space she shaped it as two large cones that visualised how the sound moved in the narrow passage. And she visualises the movement of a space hopper by physically shaping the trace of its bouncing over the floor in a model of cardboard and wood. An animation of a rolling ball is projected onto a rounded sculpture and the double emphasis on the movement makes you aware of the different steps and obstacles from virtual to physical. Instead of a perfect double representation it is the creative process and way of thinking the sculpture that is fascinating.
In Storch’s humming-bird piece, she creates illusion by transferring a two dimensional image to a three dimensional presence by rotation. The perception of the sculpture mimes the visual characters of a humming-bird; it is fast, fragile and it stands still in the air while moving its wings very fast. The sculpture arises in front of your eyes sometimes almost disappearing. It only exists in time. Fragility and transience are found in all Storch’s attempts to make three dimensional objects. The works are both concrete, physical and real but at the same time transparent, floating, absurd and imaginary.