I Have Grown Taller from Standing with Trees - Claudia Comte at Copenhagen Contemporary
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I have grown taller from standing with trees
Claudia Comte
Copenhagen Contemporary 8 February - 1 September 2019
This is a stunning exhibition in the main hall of Copenhagen Contemporary with the huge space filled with Spruce trunks that are six metres high but stripped of their bark and set on a carpet with a digitally-printed grid that becomes increasingly distorted as you move through the work.
The first rows of tree trunks are upright and set on the grid implying a carefully managed forest rather than natural woodland but the grid might also suggest the grid of roots through which, from recent research, trees are now thought to communicate.
At the centre of the space is a large ceramic sculpture - the only dark form in the space - and beyond that the trunks are falling, either toppled by the ground appearing to collapse or with the apparent hollow created by the falling timber.
You are encouraged to climb on or over the trunks but watching people, it was clear that, as in a forest, the calm and the soft light means most slow down, talk quietly or sit and think - self absorbed. Light from windows and views out have been muted with white fabric that, as in a forest, undermines any sense of distance and direction.
The trees were around 100 years old when they were felled and the growth rings on the cut ends adds that dimension of time to the strong command of the corporeal space.
