Forget what you know about the world for a moment and try to notice what you are sensing right now. Is the temperature high or low? Are your clothes soft? Heavy or light? Do you feel the warmth of your computer or the smooth surface of your smartphone screen? The body’s senses play an important role in how we perceive the world around us – and the sensing body holds a central position in Tove Storch’s work.

The touch of the eye

Storch’s Untitled consists of countless layers of fragile silk in delicate, fleshy tones. The silk is pulled tight over a square aluminium frame, gathering up in a splash of soft folds that cascade across the floor. With this work, Storch invites you to let go of rational thought and instead let your eyes glide over the sculpture and ‘feel’ it that way. Can you sense the crackling surface of the textiles and the cool metal?

Physical memories

Poetic and striking, Storch’s art is like an echo of everyday sensations that usually remain unspoken, if not unnoticed. Like the feeling of textiles against bare skin. Or our palm touching the objects around us. If you look down through the layers, you can sense imprints in the silk – perhaps made by a sleeping body? With this sculpture, Storch explores ways of understanding reality – and how those ways are connected to the memories we carry around embedded in our bodies.

Tove Storch, Untitled (detalje), 2020. ARKEN Museum for Moderne Kunst, acquired 2020

About Tove Storch

Employing a minimalist aesthetic expressed in materials that are rich in contrast and sensuous tactility, Storch gives shape to questions of time, space and perception. She challenges traditional sculpture by exploring the possibilities of the medium. Recurring materials such as metal, textiles and plaster are repeatedly put to the test as the artist probes their boundaries and explores what is technically possible.

Born 1981. Lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Educated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, in 2000-07, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, Vienna, in 2003-04 and Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee, DK, in 2005-06