Calder Harben og Maria Nørholm Ramouk: a tempo on a second glance never takes the same shape

The exhibition a tempo on a second glance never takes the same shape brings together new work by artists Calder Harben and Maria Nørholm Ramouk. Both artists are invested in the ephemerality of comprehension and how we understand rhythms of time. By turning to the practice of mark making as a way of tracking time, each artist explores the ephemeral through a material practice.

In the work of Calder Harben this is done through a new sound and print installation “trying to find another way to reach you” which presents a voice reading a short text written by Harben that questions the tempo of our ways of communicating. All life on earth is subject to the same progression of time. Slowing down recordings of Nightingales starts to take the likeness of a humpback whale song, and vice versa. A dragonfly is able to process their surroundings at a speed 10 times that of humans. How do we attune ourselves to a kind of listening that opens onto others across species? Challenging the ways we were taught to communicate, both to listen and to speak, is more critical than ever. What are we understanding, or misunderstanding?

In the work of Maria Nørholm Ramouk this is explored through stones, shadows and light. By creating different constellations with four adder stones, Nørholm Ramouk marks their shadows which appeared, moved and travelled with the sun. Having a visual approach to the objects, Ramouk seeks to get closer to the understanding of their progression over a longer period of time. The black shape, the shadow, becomes a fixed point on an ongoing journey. Over time the holes are washed out by nature. The sea has slowly but steadily dragged out the chalk from the stones, which is absorbed back into the sea, melted and dispersed throughout.