Christine Clemmesen & Maya Schønning Kjærulff | Hidden in Plain Sight

Arden Asbæk Gallery is proud to present the duo exhibition Hidden in Plain Sight, featuring Danish photo-based artists Christine Clemmesen and Maya Schønning Kjærulff. Both artists are graduates from Glasgow School of Art, respectively from 2002 and 2024, and both work within an expanded field of photography, combining it with mediums such as textile, text, marble, and glass, among others. Their process of image-making means that the works in many ways seem closer to being objects than images, while also being inherently current.

Christine Clemmesen describes a studio approach to photography, working with all the possibilities involved in the making and showing of photography – the presentation of it, how the prints are made, the scale, and the size. She engages with the physicality of print through diverse techniques that alter its form, texture, and flexibility, simultaneously challenging the original subject and purpose of the images.
Her works present themselves as painterly or even sculptural, exemplifying not only the essence of photography in today’s context, but also demonstrating how contemporary photography can embrace both haptic and optic perception. Reality is rendered optically, whether through the lens or the laser of the scanner, and this translation and transformation generate abstraction and information co-exist in a highly concrete manner. This fundamental interest in the visual experience itself saturate the work of Clemmesen, from its inception to its manifestation in physical space.

Maya Schønning Kjærulff’s work revolves around editing and translation processes. As a digital native, the young artist re-frames found footage from the internet, alongside other sources, to explore the concept of privacy in today’s world. Kjærulff utilizes both texts and images in her textiles, leaving certain aspects hidden, whether these be parts of the content, the material, or the original source itself.
Private notes are recontextualized, for example when shared publicly as an artwork, and it is this tension field that interests the artist. By using photographic images as the basis of her weaving, hereby combining digital imagery and textile, the work appears both nostalgic and dreamlike, while also being tangible objects of the 21st century.

The exhibition is part of the 2024 programme of Copenhagen Photo Festival and Art Matter Festival.

Christine Clemmesen is a graduate from The Slade School of Fine Art in London and Glasgow School of Art. She has previously exhibited at Rønnebæksholm (2022), Vandrehallen (2021), Gæsteværelset hos Tone Bonnén (2021) and Fotografisk Center (2020). I 2022 she was nominated for the international prize FOAM Paul Huf Award.

Maya Schønning Kjærulff is a Danish visual artist, currently finishing her bachelor’s degree at Glasgow School of Art. In her artistic practice, she explores the relationship between text and textile, pictorial memory, and translations between media, from the abstract to the physical.