Rose Eken

While working at punk music venues as a teenager in Copenhagen, Rose Eken developed a fascination with concert detritus. The objects she was made to clean up after an event—cigarette butts, drug paraphernalia, beer cans, discarded clothing, and lost cell phones—became emblems of punk rock culture, which she now reproduces in the form of hand-painted ceramic miniatures. Sculpting objects found in concert halls, kitchens, studios and similarly ubiquitous locations, Eken methodically replicates detritus often placing them very systematic in a grid, suggestive of scientific categorization. Her arrangements and sheer amount of production assume an anthropological quality, documenting and preserving the relics of a culture and celebrating a history in process. While Eken also produces embroideries, drawings, and sometimes even videos, she favours clay for its versatility and clumsy form, as shaping and firing warp the object along the way, resulting in unforeseen and unpredictable imperfections. Rose Eken was born in Denmark (1976) and graduated from the Royal College of Art in London in 2003. She has received critical appraise in US for her solo exhibition ‘Remain In The Light’ at The Hole gallery in New York as well as her more recent solo show ‘Tableau’ at V1 Gallery in Copenhagen, which was acquired by and is currently at display at Aros Museum of Modern Art in Aarhus, Denmark.

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