Soul Retrieval
J&K / Janne Schäfer and Kristine Agergaard
Soul Retrieval
Text, series of mixed media sculptures and works on paper, various sizes
2017
Soul Retrieval is an installation of sculptures and works on paper departing from a series of time travels, during which J&K have investigated time layers as far back as 75 million years in an experimental “archeological” excavation process.
The sculptures in the show are assembled from a wide variety of materials crafted, found and bought by J&K, forming absurd, surrealistic hybrids hovering between abstraction and figuration. They include contemporary consumer gadgets such as a home fountain, a tablet or an aroma dispenser combined with ceramics, watercolor paintings, papier maché shapes, plastic objects, branches, stones, fossils or wool. J&K regard the sculptures as ‘object-beings’ that bear witness to different layers of time: from the ancient to the contemporary or a not yet lived future. They tell of creation, death, sex, digestion, wombs, fluids, minerals and unconditional love. The works are presented alongside the text piece Time Travel Case Log – Soul Retrieval, which is a direct transcription from the artist’s time travel excavation process.
With Soul Retrieval J&K present a radical vision according to which all that exists contains an active life essence and bears a sense of memory reaching beyond the human understanding of time and linear history. It is an attempt to present a world in which objects, animals and other fantastic beings share their insights into the vastness and transitoriness of life. The work suggests that anthropocentric notions of cultural and historical identification are temporary constructions that exist parallel to an unfathomable cosmos in constant transformation.
The show that took place at Ringsted Galleriet was curated by Morten K Jacobsen and Agnete Bertram.
J&K, Soul Retrieval, series of mixed media sculptures, works on paper and text, Ringsted Galeriet, 2017, photos: M.K. Jakobsen and J&K