Kristina Matousch – CHART Art Fair: Charlottenborg, Copenhagen

We are pleased to present Kristina Matousch's solo exhibition Squat, featuring sculpture, wall objects and a performative project. The presentation circles around time, space, body and movement, in particular, the stillness of the moment before something happens. An aluminium box is installed high up in the corner of the booth; fragments of a body are visible as someone is moving in the claustrophobic space. A black sphere is pending from the ceiling high above. Wall objects in lacquered steel appear as gigantic flyswatters. The different objects in the presentation are in constant interplay, charging each other with new meanings.

The most ominous object is perhaps the black sphere, Head, pending from the ceiling, alluding to the movements of the Earth in space. But the object is also offering the possibility of a strike, taking up an imaginary space of a circular movement or the whole radius of an oscillation. If Head represents the catalyst of movement in the presentation, the wall objects Swat catch snapshots of flyswatters that hunt through the air. The flyswatters are directed toward the viewers, interacting with them. The feeling of a "smack" coming up close. At the same time, there is a filmic quality in the performance Squat acted out in the box, the naked skin pressing onto the glass and flattening out against the surface. The box is also a hideout, offering protection from what is going on in the installation below.

In the interplay between movement and stillness, between time and space, mixed emotions are intertwined in a manner characteristic of Matousch's practice. In the inherent violence in the gesture, in the stillness before a strike, Matousch points to fundamental feelings of the relationship to the body but also to the complexity of human interaction. Ultimately, we are never in the position to disregard neither time nor space.

Kristina Matousch (b. 1974) is based in Långasand and Malmö, Sweden. She holds an MFA from Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm. Her work has been shown at Spritmuseum, Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, ISSUE Project Room, New York, Trondheim kunstmuseum, Kalmar konstmuseum, Lunds konsthall, Norrköpings Konstmuseum and Moderna Museet. Recent solo exhibitions include Skissernas Museum (with Carl Boutard), Fullersta Gård, Stockholm, Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie, Basel, Galleri Riis, Galleri Thomas Wallner and Trelleborg Museum. Matousch's public art works include Knopen at Medborgarplatsen, Stockholm, Pizza Box at Hagalundskolan, Dalby, Uranus at Karolinska Institutet, Solna, as well as Depths of Time, Hyllie station, Malmö. She is represented in the collections of Moderna Museet, Malmö Konstmuseum, Borås Konstmuseum, Public Art Agency Sweden, and Bonnier Art Collection.