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Disorderly Self-Portrait

It's not the eye of the needle that changed - The Self

peres projects - chinatown

969 Chung King Road, Los Angeles, CA 90012

November 16, 2007 - December 22, 2007

Kristine Roepstorff’s solo show at Peres Projects, titled It’s not the eye of the needle that changed—The Self, is the second installation in a three part exhibition. The exhibition started at The Drawing Center in New York with It’s not the eye of the needle that changed—Time. The third installation, The Frame, will occur in Peres Project’s Art Basel booth in Miami.

Roepstorff, a Danish artist who works in Berlin, usually makes intensely complicated and intelligently composed collage. But her work for The Self lacks the determination of her previous collage and, if you weren’t familiar with Roepstorff’s poignant oeuvre, it would be easy to dismiss this work as ill-conceived. In The Mirrored Self, a diptych, a talking man in the left frame turns toward a contemplative man on the right. The objects, cloth, and foil that have been superimposed on top of these men in dialogue seem to have been blindly chosen and forced into the picture plane. The Self, a large tapestry that slopes off the wall and into the gallery space has a similar dumb-fisted quality. Most of the assemblage occurs on the portion of the cloth that lies on the floor; the added scraps and cords seem to have been intuitively dropped and then left alone.

However, if Roepstorff’s self-exploration is a compositional failure, it’s the most successful kind of failure. Through her disordered work, Roepstorff has actually created a strikingly honest self-portrait. The show’s dumb-fisted lack of resolution results in a portrait of a self that has no sense of order, a self that not only couldn’t fit through the eye of a needle but that also wouldn’t have the directive to decide whether or not it wants to fit.

- Catherine Wagley

(*Images, from top to bottom: Kirstine Roepstorff, It's not the eye of the needle that changed – The Self, November 17 - December 22, 2007; Peres Projects, Los Angeles; The Reflected Self, 2007, collage-mixed media, glass, fabric, foil, paper, vinyl; Diptych 45 x 12 inches, Courtesy of Peres Projects, Los Angeles. Kirstine Roepstorff, It's not the eye of the needle that changed – The Self, November 17 - December 22, 2007; Peres Projects, Los Angeles; The Mirrored Self, 2007, collage-mixed media, plexiglass, silverfoil, various paper, photocopies, fabric, foil mounted on wood panel; Diptych 53 x 33 inches, Courtesy of Peres Projects, Los Angeles. Kirstine Roepstorff, It's not the eye of the needle that changed – The Self, November 17 - December 22, 2007; Peres Projects, Los Angeles; The Self, 2007, collage-fabric, 196 4/5 x 118 inches, Courtesy of Peres Projects, Los Angeles.)

Posted by Catherine Wagley on 12/2/07

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