Eva Koch Note To Self

Eva Koch is one of the rare variable characters in Danish art. She started out as a sculptress and has since started creating installation and media art as well. She is educated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and has also studied a year at Barcelona University in 1989.
Photography Morten Kamper Jacobsen

In Note to Self Eva Koch works with space as the basis of her works. The works manifests themselves both as sculptures, video installations and sound. They revolve around phenomena such as repetition, changing of the seasons and stories without a beginning or an end.

In one of the works from the exhibition, the beholder is presented with the first idea and sketch of the sculpture playground that was finished at Sankt Annæ Square in Copenhagen, June 2016. The playground, which is located across from Martin Asbæk Gallery, demonstrates how a sculpture can work as a playground synchronously creating a local space where Koch, in her artistic unfolding, has used the specific location as inspiration. In Note to Self she plays with the reflection of the sculptures. You will therefore experience the sculptures in a new dimension where the reflections create a perspective that gives it a whole new shape.

Moving through the exhibition you are met by a flock of white doves that have moved into the gallery. Here they sit on a line observing the room. If you listen carefully you can hear the gentle noise of their wings as they fly around the room. The doves are placed with a view of beautiful red poppies blossoming in slow motion over and over – and sends a greeting to the exhibition That dream of peace that Eva Koch created in the Cisterns below Søndermarken in Copenhagen in 2016.
In the video installation Made By Hand we are presented with a beautiful, rustic almost abstract image of a stone circle. The live picture is taken from a lock in the Kovzha River in Russia, which has been built by thousands of forced labourers from the Gulag camps. Handmade work that we usually appreciate and see as something exclusive, suddenly gets a completely different meaning in the video installation that duplicates and confronts us with a brutal history on repeat.

In the last room you will find the dreamy installation Pharos. You notice its circular lines of light already when entering the gallery. The light comes from the lighthouse, which is known as a beacon for sailors, when they need to come safely ashore. It helps to let us know that we are on the right path. The work takes us by the hand and leads us safely to the end of the exhibition. In the same room, a projection Mit Træ (My Tree) is located I the corner so you can follow the seasonal movement and watch the leaves pop out only to later fall off again. Mit Træ lets us experience the circle of life; it is a silent comment to the idea that there is no beginning or end of things, as they repeat themselves again and again.

The works of Eva Koch often starts with this circular thinking. They are constantly evolving and never resting. The stories Koch tells through them are portrayed through the phenomena of repetition, and leaves us to discover new things every time we observe.

Eva Koch was born in Frederiksberg, Denmark, in 1953. She lives and works in Copenhagen. Eva Koch is part of several Danish, as well as international collections, such as; New Hall Art Collection, Murray Edwards Collage, University of Cambridge, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Museo de Bellas Artes, Santander, Spain, 21C Museum Foundation, Louisville, Kentucky, USA, Göteborg Museum of Art, Sweden, to name just a few.