Constructs
LOT TE FLøE CHRISTENSEN Constructs
LOTTE FLøE CHRISTENSEN
The leaf on the twig
Stick, Paper, Platform by Lars Kiel Bertelsen
The twig on the branch The branch on the tree
Stick, paper, platform. The hand, body and gaze touch on their surroundings. Often
The tree on the mountain
aimlessly, occasionally purposefully. They can end anywhere, for example in images
The mountain far out in the woods
which, in the art of Lotte Fløe Christensen, unfold between classical landscape photography and a curious, exploratory and sometimes even sculptural practice.
(Traditional Danish nursery rhyme)
The images are both works in their own right and a documentation of the artist’s activities in the landscape – a form of absent-minded wandering interrupted by the kind of fragile constructions and signs we create alone in the woods. They are therefore related, yet very different, in expressive form. The images operate on different scales, from the micro scale of inconspicuous stick structures, to the monumental macro scale of landscapes. And between them: the body looking at and acting in the world, because there is a constant and highly physical doing at play here. Somebody (a woman) does something somewhere: looks, crawls, struggles with a sheet of flapping paper, constructs precarious platforms, unstable scaffolding for … for what? Is it a game? A bizarre variation on Rock, Paper, Scissors, which in Lotte Fløe Christensen’s version would maybe be Stick, Paper, Platform? And what is a game? First and foremost, a game is a set of rules: “If X, then Y”. Something familiar all the way from childhood board games to the codified social games of adult life. The key element in a game is the move. This is when the game becomes strategic. Simple, nursery board games like Ludo are low on strategy (and therefore boring), whereas more open games, like social or erotic games, are highly strategic (and therefore far too exciting). Here, everything is at stake, as we say. There seems to be an increasing complexity in the very form of the move – its aesthetics, as it were – that in simple board games is reduced to the mechanical gesture of moving the counter from A to B, even though this gesture too can be performed with elegance or bravura. Whereas in the moves of social and erotic games, elegance is not added: they are elegance or bravura. Otherwise they become what the French call a faux pas – literally a false step.
The leaf on the twig
Stick, Paper, Platform by Lars Kiel Bertelsen
The twig on the branch The branch on the tree
Stick, paper, platform. The hand, body and gaze touch on their surroundings. Often
The tree on the mountain
aimlessly, occasionally purposefully. They can end anywhere, for example in images
The mountain far out in the woods
which, in the art of Lotte Fløe Christensen, unfold between classical landscape photography and a curious, exploratory and sometimes even sculptural practice.
(Traditional Danish nursery rhyme)
The images are both works in their own right and a documentation of the artist’s activities in the landscape – a form of absent-minded wandering interrupted by the kind of fragile constructions and signs we create alone in the woods. They are therefore related, yet very different, in expressive form. The images operate on different scales, from the micro scale of inconspicuous stick structures, to the monumental macro scale of landscapes. And between them: the body looking at and acting in the world, because there is a constant and highly physical doing at play here. Somebody (a woman) does something somewhere: looks, crawls, struggles with a sheet of flapping paper, constructs precarious platforms, unstable scaffolding for … for what? Is it a game? A bizarre variation on Rock, Paper, Scissors, which in Lotte Fløe Christensen’s version would maybe be Stick, Paper, Platform? And what is a game? First and foremost, a game is a set of rules: “If X, then Y”. Something familiar all the way from childhood board games to the codified social games of adult life. The key element in a game is the move. This is when the game becomes strategic. Simple, nursery board games like Ludo are low on strategy (and therefore boring), whereas more open games, like social or erotic games, are highly strategic (and therefore far too exciting). Here, everything is at stake, as we say. There seems to be an increasing complexity in the very form of the move – its aesthetics, as it were – that in simple board games is reduced to the mechanical gesture of moving the counter from A to B, even though this gesture too can be performed with elegance or bravura. Whereas in the moves of social and erotic games, elegance is not added: they are elegance or bravura. Otherwise they become what the French call a faux pas – literally a false step.