HANNAH TOTICKI

Mental Landscapes

April 30 - June 18, 2022

Klik her for tekst på dansk

JOIN US ON JUNE 14 AT 9-10 AM FOR:

ART MORNING: A CONVERSATION WITH

VISUAL ARTIST HANNAH TOTICKI AND RESEARCHER AND CURATOR AT MEDICAL MUSEION ADAM BENCARD

With the new exhibition Mental Landscapes, SPECTA shows the gallery's first solo presentation of the Danish visual artist Hannah Toticki. Central to Toticki's practice is a consistent focus on the conditions of the contemporary human being in a time where we celebrate speed, efficiency and self-realization. In Mental Landscapes, she also addresses our relationship - or lack of relationship - to nature. Throughout art history, depictions of nature have reflected man's relationship to our surroundings, but today the globe is in such a critical state that these depictions also "reflect back" and point to our own mental state. We have a hard time really seeing ourselves as - not just connected to - but as a part of nature.

In a series of new paper and collage works, Hannah Toticki addresses this somewhat awkward relationship with nature. The works appear as aestheticized, abstract topographies, landscapes of water, mountains, ice and meadow. But in these tactile landscapes you can also find materials such as wire from a grass trimmer, binder wire for plants, keyboard buttons cast in resin and rubber gloves, where the fingertips have been replaced by the keyboard buttons P-A-Y..

Hannah Toticki also presents a series of ceramic works which bring our vulnerability and insecurity as a general human condition into focus. These are objects that have the shape of helmets and carry titles like Protection Against Unfulfilled Desires and Protection Against Irrevocable Mistakes. The titles point to undesirable but unavoidable states and events in life. But it is obvious that the ceramic helmets, which are both heavy and fragile, do not provide protection, just as life does not grant us guarantees.

In Mental Landscapes, Hannah Toticki points to the ambiguity that our lifestyle gives us: We have a technology that sets us free and gives us endless possibilities, but which also challenges us: we can be at work constantly - and be semi present in many different places simultaneously. The keyboard is right where the machine and the inner life meet - the interface. In Hannah Toticki's practice, our work life and the relationships that emanate from it are often represented by the keys of computer keyboards. The machine has become our companion and our partner: We are Colleagues at Nighttime, as one of the worktitles frames it. And so we may at times seem more connected - and almost a part of - technology than nature.

Hannah Toticki (DK, 1984) was educated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in 2016. In the same year, she was awarded with the StartPoint Prize as the most promising new European artist at the Prague National Gallery. Since then Toticki has made a series of solo exhibition and performances at both Danish as well as international instutions, a.o. KW and Galerie Wedding in Berlin, MOCAD in Detroit, USA, and at O-Overgaden og Holstebro Kunstmuseum in Denmark. Hannah Toticki has furthermore participated in group shows such as Modern Love (Tallin, Freiburg, Utrecht), Work It Out at Kunsten Museum in Aalborg (DK), Soil.Sickness.Society at Rønnebæksholm (DK), Ung Dansk Kunst - Samfundsprognoser at Arken Museum (DK) and Shapeshifters at Malmø Malmø Museum of art (SE). Toticki has made performances at a.o. the New Carlsbergfoundation’s Up Close festival, at Roskilde Festival, at Kunsthal Charlottenborg and at SMK (the National Gallery of Denmark).