Fertility Figures
By Søs Bech Ladefoged
Among the many different media that occupies the young Danish artist Nour Fog, ceramic objects recently received a special place in his practice. The very mouldable material of clay is also closely related to his sound art, both representing the unpredictable and the playful. Through his ongoing exploration of these living forms, he questions the status quo and invites us to play along.
Working with ceramic is a relatively new thing for Nour Fog, who first really gave the clay a chance when preparing his graduation from The Jutland Art Academy in 2016. At the graduation exhibition, the visitors could experience the artwork The Edge that was a sound installation with glasses, speakers and four small, choppy, ceramic objects. He calls the objects fertility figures since they, despite their abstract character, awaken associations to the human body; blobs of dough or some fluid and thick mass.
In the Body Object series, it is exactly these associations of something organic and living that is considered. Here, Nour Fog has modulated fifteen smaller ceramic objects in shapes that are related to those of the body. Afterwards, the objects are photographed from different angles in order to resemble stimulated limbs, and with the light pink colour and the large scale of the prints, they almost appear as erotic posters.
Aside from his own projects, Nour Fog is part of the sound and performance duo Duo Demona. In the duo’s sound performances, both glasses and ceramic objects also play a big part. Currently he and the other half of Duo Demona, Maj Bjørnholdt Kjærsig, are working on a new installation based on speakers and new objects for an exhibition in April 2017. Nour Fog’s artistic practice is indeed fertile!
CV
Nour Fog (b. 1981)
Lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Graduated from The Jutland Art Academy, Denmark, in 2016. Intern at Vinyl Terror & Horror, Berlin, 2015.
Selected shows
2016 Delicate Tension, Solo exhibition, Sydhavn Station, Copenhagen
2016 Graduation, Kunsthal Aarhus, Aarhus
2014 Giving, Receiving and Changing Shape, Solo exhibition, The demo room, Gallery Image, Aarhus
2014 Transformativ, Solo exhibition, Gallery Hegnhøj & Blyme, Copenhagen
2014 The Artists Spring Exhibition, Kunsthal Aarhus, Aarhus