Tove Storch: Slumping by Alice Godwin
“Slumping” is a term used in glassmaking to describe the technique when heat and gravity shape a piece of glass to a mould. It’s a word that also conjures the exhausted, drooping body, having abandoned its good posture in a moment of rest. In the hands of Danish artist Tove Storch, both definitions are at play in a series of new sculptures at Gammel Strand in Copenhagen in her largest show to date. There is a tussle between control and surrender here, between the instincts to adapt to a given mould and to rebel against such frameworks.
In Storch’s sculpture, “The ship”, a piece of pink canvas laid over a metal structure bulges in the centre from the weight of a mass of soap inside. Though we cannot see the soap, it has stained the canvas and imbues the gallery with a smell that evokes the sensorial memories of a substance which we all have some relationship with. Swelling beyond the confines of the geometric frame, the canvas takes on a dissident form that seems as if it might explode at any moment and pour its foamy contents all over our heads. Far from releasing the tension of the taught canvas by allowing the soap to slump in this way, there is a profound sense of unease in the air. The otherworldly vessel is suspended in a moment of precarious balance.
The Ship, no title 2024, soap, cotton, metal. Photo by David Stjernholm
This swollen protrusion cannot help but suggest the female body and its own voluptuous, sagging curves. We might think of the pregnant belly, with skin stretched over the growing life within, or breasts heavy with milk. The ship will be broken down at the end of the exhibition and cease to exist, just as the human body will return to its prenatal state.
If the female body is supple and arched, then the male body is strict and unbending. Storch’s sculpture brings these two forces into dialogue, but is the woman here slumping or being forcibly pushed down? Is this a rebellion or a submission? A particularly explicit reference to the female body is imbedded in Gammel Strand’s building, where a window is punctuated by two breast-like growths made by slumping. The structure of the institution itself is the rigid framework from which the flexible artist dissents.
The theatrical arrangement of silk in “The bed” recalls the canopy of a four-poster where bodies meet. The coral draperies are tempting, as if we might nestle ourselves in-between and sleep for a moment. It’s an erotic space that is revealed by the translucency of silk and purposefully put on display. Scattered on the floor are several white ceramic vessels with real eggs inside that speak to fertility and new life. It’s a moment of marvellous mischief when the serious business of sculpture collides with gelatinous foodstuffs.
The bed, the egg, no title, 2024, silk, acrylic, metal. Photo by David Stjernholm
The bed, the egg, no title (detail) 2024, porcelain, egg. Photo by David Stjernholm
These dichotomies between masculine and feminine, strategy and spontaneity run throughout Storch’s exhibition. In the sculpture “Arch,” long strips of metal are laid between two poles. Gravity causes the strips to bow in the middle, making them seem weightless and undermining the brittle, heavy qualities of metal. Storch does not force her materials to disrupt these assumptions; she allows them to discover new identities under the natural influence of gravity. Of course, this apparent nonchalance requires effort—it takes more energy to slump than it does to sit up straight after all.
For Storch, her sculptures give physical form to sensations or experiences from life that might otherwise be impossible to express in words—the feeling of squeezing oneself into a particular role or yielding in answer to an unbending partner. Storch uses the curious metaphor, a chair flying in outer space to describe her artistic process—when she discovers such strange moments, she is inspired to translate them and convey them to an audience. The uncanny is therefore ingrained in these works where familiar, though elusive, memories are recreated in three-dimensions. Storch invites the mutinous body to abandon the integrity of its posture and slump into rebellion.